Walking foot AND ruler?

I was watching an Alex Anderson video the other day and she was talking about quilting straight lines.

I was interested that she used a walking foot AND a ruler at the same time…..

It seems like a great idea!!

Using the walking foot means that you don’t have to worry about tension or stitch length.

Using the ruler means that you can easily keep your lines straight!!

What do you think? Would this work for you?

How Do I Quilt it??

Every time that I sit down to a new quilt, the five-word question in my head is…..

HOW DO I QUILT IT????

If you have followed my progress, you know that I have participated in four free-motion-quilting challenges and even written my own (check it out here).

But all that means is that I have so many designs in my head that I can’t remember which ones I like and which ones I didn’t!!

So, I decided that it was time to get things organized a bit better and give myself a reference book to use when I ask that particular question!!

I started out with a notebook and added a fun cover to it…..

I decided to call it Free Motion FUN, because that it what it is supposed to be…..FUN…..not drudgery!!

Next I started adding pages to this reference guide…..

Tension and needle/thread instructions that I found online….

Pages from my free-motion course called “MOVE IT”…..

Instruction sheets from the Angela Walters FMQ challenges (I only included the designs that I really liked)…..

Designs from various classes that I have taken over the years…..

Instructions for the rulers that I own…..

Photocopies of magazine articles that had interesting designs (YES….it is punched on the wrong side and upside down….sigh!!)

And, finally, the instructions for my Juki Sit-Down Long Arm….

So now….hopefully….. when I ask the dreaded question, I can quickly flip thru my idea book and start quilting!!!

If you want to make your own idea book, I am sharing the cover design with you. Just click on the photo to download the pdf file…….

If you find other resources that would be appropriate for my idea book, please share them with me!!

Quilting without a plan!!

Yesterday I mentioned my dilemma about how to quilt my latest project. Since I couldn’t figure out exactly what to do, I started with a couple of simple things that I saw.

But where to go next???

I spent some time on Procreate, playing with various ideas……

….but none of them truly appealed to me. However, I did like PARTS of them!!

Firstly, I added the “petals” in part of the negative space…..

Then I added matching arcs to the outside of the pinwheel…..

Now, that made a really funky shape!!!

I then thought about quilting a circle around the pinwheel, but that didn’t turn out so well…..

The idea was good, but I didn’t have a ruler big enough to do the circle and it ended up being lumpy and bumpy, and out came the seam ripper!!!

I started looking at my rulers and realized that this one could be used to make a design that was ALMOST a circle…..

What if I use that arc and be sure to hit each of the points? THAT will work!!

But what to do next?

I found another of Angela’s new rulers…..

…and thought that it might be fun to add a flower design!!

In the end, I used three different rulers to quilt each side of the pinwheel. First I used the arc ruler to quilt from one point down to the next…..

Then I used “Petunia” to quilt the next design, ending back up where I had started…..

I liked how this looked……

….but I knew that I needed a third line to bring me to a position where I could move forward to the next side. I solved this problem by adding another arc, using yet another ruler…..

The final design looked like this…..

I am happy with how the quilting turned out and am pleased to say that every bit of the interior quilting was done using 5 rulers…..

For the two outside borders, I chose to use a couple of curvy line designs…..

Here is the finished quilt……

This has been a sweet project from inception to finish and it makes me happy to remember my new friends on the other side of the world!!!

THANKS LADIES!!!!

How am I going to quilt it?

Early this summer, I finished up the group quilt that I had done with several women from Australia and one from New Zealand.

Once I had resized a few of the blocks…..

…..it was quick work to put these brightly colored blocks together…..

…..and then add a fun border…..

But, HOW was I going to quilt it!!

Because I couldn’t answer that question, it languished in the “work-in-progress” bin for the past 3 months!!

Since I was afraid that it was going to turn into a fully-fledged UFO, I decided that it was TIME to get it quilted!!

When I can’t figure out how to quilt something, I try to start with the first thing that I see……in this case, the diagonals in the yellow, green, and orange squares…..

Then, I was pretty sure that I wanted to add some arcs in the pink pinwheels…..

I accomplished these using one of Angela Walters new rulers called “Smiley”…..

I used the longer and gentler curve to quilt the long hypotenuse line…..

….and the shorter, curvier side for the 90-degree sides…..

But, NOW I was stumped……

Come back tomorrow to see my decisions!!!

Even more FMQ

Yesterday I finished the 4th week of Angela Walter’s FMQ Filler challenge.

In the last post, I was expounding on the wonders of free-hand Clamshells….

The first pattern in this quilting session was a squared-off Clamshell…..

This was fun, but a bit boring. But, it got more interesting when I made the bricks in all different shapes and sizes…..

The next design that I tackled was a basketweave pattern that is based on a clamshell. The difference is that you travel up the previous shell and then move to the next one, giving it a woven appearance…..

I did okay with the larger shells but had issues when I tried to make them smaller and make them echo the previous shell. I would DEFINITELY need more practice on this one!!!

Next was a simple straight-lined design with random stars along the way. I used a ruler to help keep the lines straight although I am not sure that it was necessary…..

Last week I had put off this next design because I didn’t think that I could tackle it. It was a simple mixture of designs and I just wasn’t comfortable with it……