New Lily Line Ruler

The Lily Line 3 Ruler arrived yesterday. This is the third ruler in Bethanne Nemesh Lily Line series. There is another but that one looked a bit big to me so I held back.

Today I sat down and tried this one out for the first time. I had watched Bethanne Nemesh' FB videos (you can find them on her blog) about her rulers and was keen to put some of that into practice. This ruler is for smaller designs. From watching her video again the largest fits into a 6in border.

First I did one of my favourite designs in a 6in block (with the puffhead that is used for about 5in borders)

You can see that I struggled starting on the right upper quadrant. Bethanne makes it always looks so easy! So that was a bit of a fail in terms of moving the ruler over to get a bit of a channel happening. The next one underneath got too fat, however for the next two on the left I got it exactly right, i.e. at specific points about 1/4in away. This looks great! Writing about it now, I cannot remember how I exactly shifted the ruler to achieve this...will have to do it again and make myself a note. 

In terms of marking, I used the center and aligned the ruler 1/4in away from it and then placed the ruler with one of its precision holes directly on the diagonal line. For good measure I also placed a dot on the fabric exactly where the ruler sat, then measured it (7/8in) and placed the same dot in each quadrant. This is actually very cool and once you master this it is a very easy way to put a motif in an empty block. Without ruler I would have to trace this on.

Next I attempted the Amish Curl Feathers...let's just say, I managed. 

My pretend border was 4 1/2in and I used the medium puffhead for this one. I had made spaces in my border, approximately 5in apart, however had not really thought through how I would utilise this. My feather curl did not fill the space, so I just kept going which made it very confusing. Looking at it now, I also think that this curl is slightly too big for this space. I should have maybe made the curl smaller which would have given me more room around it. In any case, while stitching I got very confused as to how big I wanted my feathers and how long they should extend into the surrounding space. Not bad though for a first attempt. Definitely will need more practice on this and get a feel for how I like this to look. Again, the ruler was effortless...I aligned the precision hole on the center line which made it easy to repeat. Next time though, I also need to measure the distance from precision hole to curl (I think...might have to watch the video again to get my head straight on this). This is how this was aligned to stitch out the curls

As you can maybe see, I made heaps of marks with a black Sharpie on the ruler while I did my little exercises. Here is the ruler after...the marks come off with isopropyl alcohol...not a trace. However, I only mark the ruler on the top, not the bottom where the lines are etched in, as you could stain the etchings.

Well, this was fun...I am planning to do this again after watching parts of the video again today as there were a few things that I missed and I also want to try a few other things with this little beauty.

Karin