Lana Lemur Continued - Almost Half Way

As explained in my last post, I am trying out Claudia Pfeil's method of filling up a background as demonstrated in her DVD 'Claudia's (P)Fillers'. Essentially this is a mix and match approach starting with some bigger circles strewn across the quilt and then freemotion quilting from one to the other using different designs. The idea is to create sufficient contrast between the designs to make the whole thing visually pleasing.

Easier said than done!

I started out with the following designs, combining straight lines with stacking shells and pebbles

Felt that it needed something more and decided to mix in a meandering box design to create contrast to those round organic looking designs. Also wanted to loosen it up a bit as I do not want the whole quilt too tightly quilted.

That looked alright however I was not entirely happy with my boxy meander. I did, for a bit of extra fun, try that box design with a ruler in another section...basically just to see how annoying this would be. Never really considered doing this with a ruler and always thought that this would be incredibly tedious.

Wow, to my surprise that went like a treat. All I had to do was to flick the ruler around my box...I did not meticulously align the ruler, just eyeballed its straightness because I was sure that visually, the eye would view its straightness and assume that the lines were all properly aligned at the correct angle. In addition, I used the Capri stitch regulator for this exercise which made it look even more formal. This was exactly the contrast I was after. It looks straighter, more formal and mixes in well with the surrounding lines.

If you compare the two pictures above you can see the difference (yes, I un-did my organic box meander). While the more organic, freehand method is fine when it stands alone as an overall design, for this exercise I really wanted a sharp, crisp contrast to the curves and circles. Really happy with how this is turning out.

I almost finished all the circles for about half the quilt. Quilting the straight lines in sections 'eats' up a fair amount of space and the filling tends to become more manageable that way. Running out of ideas on what to put in the circles and will have to recycle a few designs.

The Capri 18 is behaving like a dream...no tension issues (I am using Aurifil Mako 50/2 on top and Deco bob in the bobbin) and the stitch regulator is my best friend for all those straight lines.

I am joining Cheeky Cognoscenti for her very first Long Arm Learning Linky Party.

Cheeky Cognoscenti

Check it out! The linky party will run weekly and is open every Tuesday through to Friday.  

Karin

Handiquilter Ruler of the Month Club 5

Picked up the next ruler (we are running a bit behind over here, so this is only the second ruler)

The Half Carat Diamond Ruler

I gave it a whirl, fresh out of the package...I am putting up my not-so-perfect attempts here to show that ruler quilting is like freemotionquilting...it takes a moment to get the hang of it and I am no exception to this. Every ruler is different and it takes me a few goes to get used to the different rulers, i.e. work out the alignment, figure out what one can do with a ruler (in addition to the obvious) and get a handle on how to best hold it. So, here it goes...not that pretty.

Also had some bearding going on on this little practice piece 😼

The diamonds come out at 4in and were relatively easy to do...again I was amazed at the accuracy of the template. Took me a little while to work out how to make another smaller diamond inside (in fact had to look at the Handiquilter ROMC page to watch that video again and it was embarrassingly simple). Then I played around with the  longer pointed triangle and stitched out simple triangles. Switching the ruler around I was then able to use the flatter triangle of the top of the diamond to put a channel in there. Really liked this...would look good in a smaller border (of a table runner for example) and can be done entirely without any marking. My kind of ruler! Lots of things that you can do with this ruler. I ran out of room to try the block motifs...will leave this for another day.

Linking up to Andree over at Freemotion Mavericks a bit belatedly, but I got got confused with the dates

Absolutely love Ruler Work

I have been working away on the challenge of our local HQ group run by Heather Hopkins.

Absolutely love the ruler work! Getting better at it, bit by bit. For this piece we have so far used the HQ Skinny Ruler, some curved rulers and are currently using the Line Grid Ruler for the corner treatment (not shown).

For the arcs I used the circle ruler set combined with the Echo feet set for the Sweet 16 to get the right size. Bit of an adventure but I managed this in the end. The echo feet set for the machine is amazing, basically 3 feet with different echoes attached...3/8in, 1/2in and 3/4in. This makes is possible to customise your rulers to the size that you need. In my case, I used the 9in circle and attached the 1/2in echo foot to quilt out a 10in half circle. Very useful indeed.

Then I used another arc to create a bit of a swag. For this I used the Pro Echo 12in arc

As you can see I am starting to amass a bit of a collection of rulers to choose from. I did participate in the first Handiquilter Ruler of the Month Club that was run by Handiquilter through our local group. This just coincided with my purchase of the machine and I thought this was an easy way to get introduced to quilting with rulers on the machine...6 rulers in 6 months. They then ran a second ruler club and I did exercise some major restraint and did not sign up as I did not want to 'start collecting' rulers. Haha...have just signed up for the third Handiquilter Ruler of the Month Club though! There are some very interesting shapes in there that could be useful (it has a 1/4in Line Grid ruler in there!). Reality is I am just addicted to the ruler work...also saw the other day that Angela Walters has brought out another set of her own rulers. Very enticing indeed, hers are particularly useful for quilting on the DSM, I think. In fact, if you look around on the net there is a ruler for just about any shape and given that they are not cheap you really have to have a bit of a think about how often and for what you are going to use these...at least that is what I am trying to do.
I might stitch together another Charm Square quilt for the next ruler club, so that I can practice the new shapes that are coming.

Apart from this I am trying to piece together the backing for my 1000Pyramid quilt. I am so spatially challenged...this always takes me an extraordinary time to figure out how to put this together. There is a free class on Craftsy run by Elizabeth Hartman called Creative Quilt Backs that was quite handy to watch for this exercise...she makes it sound so easy.

 Karin