Playing with Rulers

I like to push the boundaries a bit with my sitdown longarm, i.e. see what else I can do on there and how difficult (or not) is it to push my quilt through the machine with the latest ideas I have. Given that I have a draw full of rulers I am always looking for new ideas to use my rulers to complete allover designs.

I recently picked up a panel quilt from the charity group I am involved in. The panel is "Elsa" from Frozen. The quilt is a little bit bigger than the usual baby quilt and measures approx. 47in x 55in. In the past I have often finished those types of quilts with clamshells using the HQ Clamshell ruler. Fun to do and relatively quick. For this one though that would have been too small and I needed another idea. Looked through my draw and decided to use one of Amanda Murphy's circle rulers to do a big Orange Peel design over the quilt.

I picked the 7in circle and started...literally regretted my choice straight away. The 7in ruler fits my whole hand. Thinking I would just go around and around I thought that this would be quick and easy. Wrong! The ruler shifted of course with the movement of the quilt. As you have to backtrack over one part of the circle as you move along that became quite difficult, particularly starting off with the batting making everything more wobbly and moveable. I struggled big time...

Solution: those little rubbery draw liners. Cut myself two pieces off and placed them under the ruler for every circle I did.

So much for quickly quilting this out, but at least my backtracking worked out nicely. The size of the ruler made it challenging to move along, but as I now was committed to finishing this off, I had to think this through a bit better. An added challenge was the wool batting. It does give you a fair amount of loft, so I had to concentrate and go slowly to ensure my hopping foot stayed on the side of the ruler. The way I quilted around the ruler involved shifting my hands constantly to hold the ruler next to the foot steady while at the same time adjusting the quilt a number of times as it was always shifting sideways as I went around the ruler. All this while holding the ruler in exactly the same place to get the backtracking right.

Must say I was not confident that this would work. A few rows in I measured where I was up to in relation to the bottom edge. I was pretty sure that my circles were not straight across and that I had lost my way. To my surprise I was spot on...same distance on both sides. This was encouraging!

Gave it a bit of a visual...not too bad. Not perfect by any means but overall looked quite good. Every now and then the shape in the middle of the circle looked a bit off center but that had to do with me not always hitting the exact point where the circles meet. I let go of worrying about that because there was just too much going on in terms of stitching, holding the quilt, avoiding drag and keeping the ruler steady.

Stitching along...

As per usual half way through I turned the quilt around and quilted the circles towards me. Struggled with the drag of the quilt at that point and also thought that my circles were really going out of alignment. Turning the quilt at that point is always good as you now pushing it in the opposite direction and those inaccuracies are starting to disappear.

Was very curious how I would go approaching the top of the quilt and prepared myself for an uneven finish. But, lo and behold...more or less finished evenly across the top. That was a bit surprising seeing the pushing and shoving I had to do... 

Took the basting out and had a close look but cannot take a photo at the moment as it is evening over here and the shots would come out too dark. Will post a shot of the finished quilt in another post. 

Overall happy with my efforts...looks fairly consistent even though my circles shifted slightly to the left but I don't think that that is noticeable once the binding is on as it is only by about a quarter inch.

Might try this again on a smaller quilt using the smaller 5in circle.

 

Karin

To Do Tuesday #81

My task from 2 weeks ago was to finish my stitching in the ditch of my background filler project - Done! While happy with that I am a bit anxious about how the middle section will quilt out as I got the two seams running through the orange fabric. Not sure whether this will work out so good, but we shall see.

That's the only task I had put down as we had our annual quilt show over here and I knew that I would not do anything much else.

The quilt show was great, even more so as I won two awards for my wholecloth quilt.

This was the Festival of Quilts 2024 run by the SA Quilter's Guild. My wholecloth won first place in the 'Other Category' and a Special Award for Excellence in Machine quilting on a stationary longarm.

I was chuffed to say the least! Funny thing happened though. Normally you get a phone call a few days before the award presentation. Well, I did not get a phone call, hence thought that I had missed out and as it was a very cold and wintery evening I did not go to the award presentation. The next day I went to the quilt show and whilst there, a friend texted me to congratulate me on my win. I was absolutely gobsmacked and it took a few minutes for that to sink in. Went over to the display of the quilts and lo and behold there is was with those ribbons. Made my day...I was particularly happy with the Excellence in machine quilting for this piece as this must have been the first wholecloth I am truly happy with in terms of workmanship. It measures about 36-3/4in and was quilted with Aurifil 50/2 thread in a gold type colour and then I used 100wt Invisafil to quilt the background in a matching colour. It was nicely flat where I wanted it to be flat and perfectly straight. Was so impressed with that. If interested, I posted some close-up shots HERE.

Apart from this, I did finish my ugly jumper project

The colours are just hideous (chosen by my daughter when she was much younger). I made this jumper as a knit-along while my daughter attempted to knit this raglan following a pattern from a book she bought. As I am a bit out of practice with knitting I thought that I better knit along to see how this works in case my daughter had questions. Well, her jumper has become an UFO...and I was left with this monster of a project. Over the last few weeks I have made my way through this pattern...thankfully this is a short jumper, as the young ones are currently wearing. Had a few problems with the shaping of the arm and the weight of this thing (it is knitted top down in one piece, but otherwise quite easy to do. Got a bit enthused with this and will make this again for myself but in a solid colour and longer. Quite enjoyed knitting in the evenings when watching TV.

Also made some headway on my second sock

Got sick of having so many unfinished things lying around. Managed the heel and the shaping of the gusset today and now it is just knitting in the round the length of the foot. Again another nice TV project.

In terms of tasks I am unsure what to put on my list at the moment as there are a number of things I am working on (and they are all competing for attention)

- make a start on the quilting for the background filler project

- finish the sock

- watch Bethanne Nemesh' Sweet Tooth class that I bought earlier in the year and pull out some fabric

- make a cover for my Q20 (have been avoiding this for a while and need to work out an easy covering - the ones that I have seen have zippers and openings looking very difficult)

- drop off the charity quilt and get some new ones to quilt.

- make a fox block

Well, we shall see...I could have extended this with other tasks but this is just getting confusing now. Probably need some time to re-hash my plans.

Linking up to Quilt Schmilt for the To Do Tuesday #81

Karin

Festival of Quilts 2024

I had the bestest time at the show! The atmosphere was great, the vendor hall so very tempting and on top of that I had the biggest surprise on the day.

As my readers would know (I talked about this for weeks on end) I entered my wholecloth quilt into the show. I have entered quilts before in the show and was familiar with the process. Normally if you win an award you do get a phone call a few days before to attend the award presentation. Well, I did not get a phone call so told everyone in the family that I did not win an award this year. Went to the show on the Friday to take some photos of my quilt and spent some money in the vendor hall. Had a fabulous time and was just at the Wonderfil stand when a friend texted me from the show grounds congratulating me!!! She sent a photo of my quilt. I was absolutely stunned and somewhat gobsmacked. Had not looked at the display as yet and actually went over to have a look. 

Won two awards: First place in my category which was 'Other Techniques' and also a Special Award for Excellence in Machine Quilting. Made my day...I am so very pleased with this.

Apparently somebody forgot to ring for this category. Bit of a pity that I did not get to the award presentation, but realistically I could have gone of course even if I did not win, however it was a rainy and very cold evening so I did do some knitting instead.

So finally I can share some process photos which I have been waiting for:

Finished project: can honestly say that this is probably the first time I was really happy with every aspect of my workmanship (...and this is big for me, does not happen that often!)

The centre motif: stitched with a combination of rulers, freehand and also used one of Cindy Needham's stencils (rope) for the inner border.

Lots of feather arrangements

Amish Curling Feather border: put the learnings from one of Bethanne Nemesh' workshop ( I think it was called Feather Fiesta) into practice

Lots of texture: chose to do mainly tiny lines in the background. While the main elements were stitched with Aurifil 50/2 thread I did use 100wt Invisafil thread of the same colour to totally flatten the background. Included a little bit of a microstipple in the feather centers, however that was tedious and very heavy-going on the eyes. 

I am so glad I finished this. This was a design that I started back in 2018 when I did a workshop with Cindy Needham. Was so enthused in her class that I drew up an entire wholecloth in the class. I was going to stitch this out but as the design needed several tidy ups never quite got around to it. Over the years then I altered the design several times...never quite happy with it until last year when I finally had enough and spent the time to finalise the design.

Well, onto the next project...

Karin