Deciding On A Quilting Design

The Fancy Foot block is cute, but left me scratching my head for a suitable quilting design. I had decided to do ruler work instead of an allover design. I have a whole bag full of rulers by now and the best way to become really familiar with them is by using them on a quilt. I find that it does take a bit of practice to work out how to align them, the best way to hold them and which one you might prefer for which job. But first, I had to come up with something...

This took a lot of doodling on the Ipad...tried all sort of things and in the end decided to go for some straight lines to stitch down the elongated triangles in order to emphasize the circular nature of the 'foot', then do some simple curves in the square sections and some pebbles in the middle to make the middle section recede. Worked out a stitching path diagram which took the longest time...somehow I find that incredibly difficult to visualize, so out came the Ipad again.

Realised today that this may need to be revised as I did not stitch one seam down...not sure whether I like this or not as the 'foot' is puffing out a bit.

Happy with the arrangement though.

I used the following rulers for this first part:
- Pro Echo3 &5 (all time favourite shown above)
- Ditch ruler (shown above)
You would have seen the circles in the sashing. Thought I give that a try...used the long Skinny ruler to quilt a 1/4in echo and then used the 1/4in Swiss Cheese ruler. My sashing is 1 1/2in wide, so I used the 3/8in Echo foot to make the circle exactly 1in.

Was a bit impressed with that...have only really played around with the Swiss Cheese ruler on practice samples but was encouraged by the first lot that I did. Accuracy was a must as the circle fits exactly in that space with not a millimeter to spare. At this stage I also realised that I needed to do the sashing first before the dense quilting would compact the areas...so continued on that today...

Well, alignment  was an issue...I had drawn myself a center line in my sashing but somehow that did not work so well, possibly because I was drawing on the sandwiched piece, so my line was not necessarily exactly in the middle. Also, of course, my quilt is not sitting tightly on a frame but is scrunched up all over the place which does affect the alignment of things. After a while I started to eyeball this a bit, however the eye is trained for 1/4in, not 3/8in. To my surprise, at least in one of the long sashings I found that if I aligned the side markings of the circle exactly at the top of the sashing, I hit both echo lines spot on. I spent a lot of time looking at this as this made absolutely no sense, however it worked! I suspected that I was shifting the ruler ever so slightly as I was doing the circle because I was holding on too tight trying to concentrate on staying on the circle. Anyway, this is how far I got today...

Looks really nice, I think. Planning to do swirls around the applique but will have to finish all the sashing first.

Really enjoying this and getting a very good workout on all the different rulers.

Karin

Handiquilter Ruler Of The Month Club - The Skinny Ruler

Picked up the next ruler - the 2x10" Skinny Ruler

If you are wondering what this Ruler of the Month Club is all about, head over to the Handiquilter site and have a look. They have a video for the rulers as they come out each month. Over here in Australia we are a bit behind as we started about a month later.

So, I tried the skinny ruler

Did not find it that easy to use as it is a bit longer than other rulers I tried and if you do not hold it correctly, i.e. move your grip as you go along, it will slip.

The grid gave me the biggest issue...for the life of me I cannot do a grid with a ruler! Kept getting the spacing wrong and for a 1/2in grid any sloppiness in alignment shows severely after a while. So in the end I drew it in and followed the lines with the ruler.

Diamond in a square was easy to do...might just have to get the spacing a bit better.

Enjoyed this one! Just lines spaced 1/4in apart. That was quite manageable and after a while I also managed to stitch along the seam with some consistency with the ruler to get to the next space. So yes, it was getting easier.

More lines and a bit of filling in. That was quite fun to do.

And in the end I did the Paradox on a scrap fabric piece, as I could not get it together on the quilt square as I could not turn the quilt all the time. Definitely more practice needed

What you think of my stitching? I think I am getting more used to the machine...it is all getting a bit easier.

Next ruler is one with lots of little circles...that is going to be interesting.

Karin