Amy's Top Tips for Quilting with rulers on a stationary machine.
Have you guys ever tried ruler work on your domestic sewing machines? I’m just getting started on this new-to-me machine quilting technique. However, today, I’m going to share a few wor…
Domestic machine Ruler work with Westalee Design by Sew Steady ruler foot and 12-inch Arc/straight template
Here is our beginner guide to Free Motion Quilting with a Ruler (also called templates). Free Motion Quilting templates help you to create designs like Baptist Fans, Arcs, Clamshells, Waves and more. This getting started guide will help you install your ruler foot, setup your machine and get started!
How to choose quilting designs. Talking about types of designs and their uses for quilting, whether free motion, walking foot quilting, quilting with rulers, or even hand quilting.
Join in for the final part of the Essential Ruler Quilting Challenge! This week, you'll be ruler quilting with the Squiggle ruler.
How to Machine Quilt with the Serpentine Stitch
Straight line quilting is a great beginner quilting technique, but there's a right way and a wrong way. Continue reading to see if you are doing it right!
In this beginner's guide, we'll explore everything you need to know about using rulers for longarm quilting.
Straight line quilting is a great beginner quilting technique, but there's a right way and a wrong way. Continue reading to see if you are doing it right!
Experiment with ‘wavy’ rulers to add movement, dimension to quilts...
Do you know that the regular, long rectangular ruler that all quilters own is not that regular?? It can do more than cutting strips! Those 30, 45, and 60 degree lines help you cut triangles. How about these triangles of this block? The big angle of this triangle measures 120 degrees and the other two […]
Collaboration Time! Stephanie Soebbing has pieced a gorgeous mini quilt called the Strippin' Mini and she's sent it to me for quilting. Click Here to find Stephanie's Tutorial on piecing this mini qui
Rulers for quilting can be tricky! There are so many out there. Really. There are a lot!!! I sometimes get all caught up on the quilt ruler hype and then end up with these piles
Two new quilting designs in one week? Yes! I’m really wanting to dig into new machine quilting designs and get...
This is part five of a six-part series from Lori Baker on Quilting With Rulers. Lori writes, "With deadlines looming, I spent the entire day sewing my Halloween quilt. I can’t show you the quilt but I can show you one of the fabrics I’m using. Isn’t this just the cutest?"
This is definitely my favorite block so far. Here are the particulars: RULER: 12/13″ arc LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: 101, Beginner Ruler Quilting, some experience Free Motion Quilting (FMQ) DESIGNS: cros…
Today I'm going back and forth between baking for our Thanksgiving feast tomorrow, cleaning the house up a bit and machine quilting. I have a goal of finishing three of these quilts before Christmas!! One is finished, I just passed the halfway point quilting the second one and the third is ready to layer. To stay on track, I need to complete two rows of Baptist fans across a quilt each day! My office (where my APQS George is set up) is adjacent to my kitchen so it's easy to do a bit of this and then a bit of that. I'm using HandiQuilter's Half-Circle Templates to layout the fans. There are other tools with multiple circles that you can use to lay it out but this is the one I own. When I posted a progress report on my Facebook page (Mary Brower Huey if you want to follow me) a couple hours ago, several questions popped up and another idea for a post was born!?! And it's more fun to write something than it is to clean something! After some drawing experimentation, this has been my strategy for stitching the fans on the machine. For an odd number of arcs, I begin at the right edge of the quilt with my smallest arc and travel left and down to the bottom edge of the quilt. I travel left along the lower edge of the quilt to the next arc and travel up and to the right, back to the right edge of the quilt. Then up the edge to the next arc, turn left and stitch down to the bottom edge. Over to the beginning of the fourth arc and up and to the right again. And back down to the left. One fan completed! To begin the next fan, I travel back along the end of the last arc (see the green arrow) until I reach the beginning of the smallest arc for the second fan. One of my technique goals for these quilts is to improve my traveling lines so they aren't noticeable -- not quite there but getting better. Now I repeat the sequence traveling over previous lines of stitching to get from the end of an arc to the beginning of the next arc. When I reach the left edge of the quilt, I cut the thread and go back to the right edge and begin the process again (the blue lines). The bottom ends of all the arcs will touch the final arc of the previous row -- more chances to improve my traveling skills!! If I were using Baptist fan on a smaller quilt, I would use fewer arcs to make a smaller fan. The strategy needs to be adjusted slightly for an even number of arcs. I begin at the bottom edge of the quilt, and work up to the right side, then down, then up, and finally down so I end each fan along the lower edge of the row. To travel to the starting point for the next fan, I travel to the left traveling along the top arc of the previous row. My arcs are about 1" apart and the 5 arcs give me about a 6" tall row. My quilts are 72" square so 12 rows from top to bottom gets the job finished. So two rows a day means 6 days to quilt one of them. Since I have arthritis in my neck and shoulders, I minimize stress in those areas by working at the machine in 30 minute spurts. When I have them all finished, I'll share the complete story of these quilts with you. And if you are baking today, too -- I hope your pies are glorious!! Linking up over at Freshly Pieced's WIP Wednesday!! Happy Thanksgiving!! Mary Huey www.maryhueyquilts.com
Continue reading for our 6 step process on how to make a quilting plan and feel confident in your design before ever making a stitch
This great ruler pack by Inspira and the Husqvarna Viking Designer EPIC 2 combine to make ruler work extremely fast and easy to do. Using rulers is so easy if you know what you're doing. Inspira ruler foot templates. Clover Chaco Liner.
Choosing quilting designs can be a difficult part of making quilts. Continue reading for 5 thing to keep in mind when making quilting plans.
5 must-have quilt rulers for any quilter. Tips for storing and organizing your quilt rulers. Are bloc-loc rulers worth it?
Kathy wants to machine quilt, but can't get a walking foot for her old quilting machine. Can she create a quilt without a walking foot?
This great ruler pack by Inspira and the Husqvarna Viking Designer EPIC 2 combine to make ruler work extremely fast and easy to do. Using rulers is so easy if you know what you're doing. Inspira ruler foot templates. Clover Chaco Liner.
Today's my stop for the Back to School Blog Hop organized by fellow Portlander, Sam Hunter! Oh quilting friends, do you hold onto ...
Learn more about quilting with your walking foot during my "31 Days of Walking Foot Quilting" series.
Learn how to use baking paper as an aid for your free-motion quilting. Tutorial includes instructions on how to quilt a stylised flower motif suitable for square blocks. Free downloadable template provided.
I thought it might be useful for me to do a post on clamshell quilting. I do use this overall design quite often on my baby quilts as it is a fun way to quilt and always looks great on those little quilts. Babies and clamshell just go together for some reason. I recently finished a charity quilt with clamshells and while I was quilting along I thought that some may look at this and think that it is too hard to do over an entire quilt. I use the Handiquilter Multi Clamshell ruler to do the quilting however there are other rulers you can use, i.e. the Handiquilter Versa tool or a circle. A circle, of course, is a little bit harder as you do not have those nodges that stop your foot from going over the line when you place one clamshell over the other. For most baby quilts I use the 4in size of the Multi Clamshell ruler. I do not mark lines onto the quilts to keep me straight basically because that would involve a lot of precise work to get that right and I don't think it's necessary. Starting from the bottom up, I first inspect my edge. It is very important that the edge is straight. If it is not you will need to establish a straight line on the bottom as all your other clamshells (and their straightness) will be based on that. Maybe for the first row of clamshells, also make yourself a mark every 4in so you get the first row down perfectly. And this is basically where perfection ends (coming from a perfectionist). As you quilt, there will be a slight amount of compaction. The above charity quilt had a puffy wool batting, so the compaction started to happen literally straight away meaning that the center line of your clamshell ruler will not necessarily align with the valley of the clamshell underneath. That is incredibly distracting and can throw you a bit. I have found that I can largely ignore this. Instead I focus in on keeping my clams straight and in line by marking the center of each clamshell as I go along. So I will quilt a row, then stop, mark the center of each clamshell just quilted and continue with the next row placing the clamshells exactly where they should be. Next issue will be that your clamshells will not necessarily end up exactly on those points because as you are quilting you have put too much pressure on your ruler and things have moved over ever so slightly. Also very normal and happens every time. The good thing with my center marks is that I can see how I am doing, i.e. where I am definitely not on point. This is where the fudging begins. Usually this happens in the middle of a row. So as I am quilting I now have one or two clamshells that are slightly out of alignment. In this instance I might shorten my clamshell a bit by starting to quilt the clam, stopping in the middle and shifting the ruler over a bit to hit the next clamshell at the marked point. Other times I might carry that shift over to the next clamshell a bit to see how the shifting carried on over the row and adjust it then a bit. As I am now on high alert I will check my row, making sure that I end up on the side in the same position. Also when marking the next row in the center I will usually check the alignment underneath to ensure that the clamshell is in the center and straight. Over the next few rows, particularly as you are nearing the center slight mis-alignments will occur...sometimes in the middle and other times towards the edge and I will keep fudging to get them back into their right position. If it is a pieced quilt I will also check the height of my clamshells as I pass over a horizontal seam which will give me a pretty good idea on whether I am dead straight or not. Again, there are adjustments you can make. If one clamshell is taller than the other you can adjust this in the next row by just shifting your clamshell ruler up a bit when you come to the offending spot. Once you reach the middle of your quilt, you will likely have to turn the quilt and start quilting your clamshells towards you. Often my clamshells shift a fair bit in that row just because of the change in positioning the ruler. In the little quilt above I was mis-aligned towards the edge quite obviously. In this scenario I will look the other way and have a mis-aligned clamshell but ensure that I mark the next row perfectly using a longer ruler to align to the valleys of the clamshells underneath to get back to the alignment as it should be. The point I am trying to make is that you cannot see this once it is all done as your eyes only see the very consistent and repeating clamshells. The real test comes in the last row when you hit the edge as this will show how straight and consistent you have kept your clamshells. In my example, I was pretty consistent, maybe out by about 1/16in in terms of the height going towards one side, so it was not dead straight. However, the way the clamshells miraculously lined up with the top edge meant that I just made the clams on one side ever so slightly higher to hit the edge and the issue was solved. As you apply the binding on the edge, no one is going to measure that and definitely no one will see that. Let me know if you have any questions. Happy to talk more on this Karin
Using your domestic sewing machine for straight line machine quilting is not as hard as you think! It's quite simple once you get the hang of it and have the proper machine feet for your
