Let's Do Some Ruler Work #2

Welcome to the Ruler Linky Party #2

I would like to thank the quilters that linked up a fortnight ago. We had Rosemary from The Knitting Quilter showing us how some simple repetitive designs can lift your quilt to the next level

And then there was Susan from Quilt Fabrication providing a fantastic tutorial on Chicken Wire Quilting which I bookmarked.

Also participating was @camapleleaf on Instagram who is participating in Natalia Bonner's 'Let's Stitch a Block a Day'

I have been aware of Natalia's QAL and have been loosely following it, but not stitching the designs out or always watching the tutorials so it was great to go through @camapleleafs account to see the designs stitched out...if you have time, go and have a look, beautifully stitched out!

Anyway, I have been re-acquainting myself with my Pfaff Quilt Expression 4.2 in terms of ruler quilting. My HQ Sweet 16 is sold and I am patiently waiting for the new Capri machine. It's been about 2.5 yrs since I last quilted with rulers on a domestic machine, so I will share a little bit about what I use and how I set my machine up. First and foremost, you need a level surface. I can sink my machine into the cupboard so that it is level with the table which is extremely helpful and I also  use a Supreme Slider to ensure I can move my fabric around with ease.

You need a ruler foot...I use the Clarity Ruler foot from Accents In Design. I previously wrote about this foot HERE...I prefer it to other feet on the market, but this is just my personal preference. I believe that there is now a Pfaff Ruler foot on the market but since I had the HQ Sweet 16 I obviously did not purchase that. Here is what my ruler foot looks like

The foot attaches with ease once you take the shank off and all that needs to be done is centering the needle and adjusting the height of the foot

Love this foot...gave me absolutely no trouble and the stitches were fine. 

So I stitched out 2 of Natalia's designs today...a bit wobbly as I am not used to stitching with rulers on the domestic machine anymore but overall quite good

The left was today's 'Spin' block - Day 255 and the right is my all-time favourite block that I used in one of my quilts. So easy to do and so effective. 

What have you been working on?

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Karin

Progress Notes

I finished my ruler work on the Field Guide quilt. If you are following my blog you would have seen that I recently purchased the Clarity Ruler foot from Accents In Design

I will not go on about it in this post...Please see earlier posts HERE and HERE for some information about the Ruler foot. Suffice to say that I LOVE it! It is easy to attach and most importantly stays on, easy to adjust and best of all, it is 'see through', so you can see very clearly where you are going.

My quilt had laid dormant for a good year and while it was not the easiest to practice on I did muddle my way through the gazillions of squares that needed to be filled in. Some look great and others, well, not so great! The important thing for me was to get a grip on eyeballing the 1/4" distance and aligning the ruler correctly and practising quilting with a ruler. I very early figured out that going behind the ruler foot with the ruler is not my thing and followed a particular path that I then did over and over again...with time and more squares, this got easier and I also became a lot faster at completing them. Put a few safety steps for myself into place;
- foot off the pedal when aligning the ruler to prevent accidentally coming down on the ruler; once aligned, lower your foot and move against the ruler
- ruler out of the way when bringing up the bobbin thread to start quilting, and
- not pressing too hard against the ruler foot when following the curves.

As mentioned before, had no issues with thread breakage or tension issues, in fact the stitching quality is really good.

Now I only have to finish the lines in the light-brownish rectangles

Who's brilliant idea was this?? I continued on this the other day and am going through the lines with some speed. This quilt just needs to be finished. Not one of my better works, but too nice to just have lying around as a UFO.

I did do a lot more playing around with the Ruler foot...definitely like it and can highly recommend it. Last year when playing around with rulers I was definitely less sure about quilting with rulers, but I must say this new foot has definitely given me confidence in terms of including some ruler work in my projects.

Karin