I have truly enjoyed using the Westalee Spin-E-Fex rulers when I was quilting on the Brown Stripe Quilt!!
Today I want to demonstrate the #15 ruler……
It is one of the easiest rulers to use and produces a beautiful design…..
I hope that this video will encourage to try this (or any) ruler!!!
Happy Quilting!!!!
I was determined to have these trees finished in time to decorate for Christmas and it happened….
I am super pleased with how they look!!
But, the last time you saw them they were in lots of pieces so let’s talk about how they got from there to here….
I finished the paper piecing and was ready to add the borders. I trimmed down the entire tree leaving a 1/4 inch seam allowance around the pattern lines. Then, I removed the paper just along the edges….
That way the edges were free of paper but the rest of the piece stayed stabilized.
After adding the borders it was time to remove the rest of the paper and I found a new tool while doing it. I normally used a seam ripper to help get under the paper…..
…but was always concerned that I would accidentally clip the threads or, even worse, cut a hole in the fabric!!
Then I remembered my “Purple Thing”!! It was perfect for this task…..
Another reason why I am not fond of paper piecing….
Now it was time to think about quilting. I tried a few designs on paper…..
…but decided that I wanted to see it in the real size.
You may be tired of videos but I wanted to share one more that shows how I planned the quilting and then how easy it was to actually perform the design…..
I kept the rest of the quilting really simple and am especially happy with the striped binding…..
Another project finished…….
I haven’t been quilting with rulers for long, but I have wondered how I could see what a pattern would look like before I started quilting it. I have asked myself how to know if a design would fit into the block or border that I was working on.
Westalee Rulers has provided the perfect solution to this dilemma….
Check out this video for a demonstration of how they work…..
This system could also be used to mark quilts for hand quilting or for Free-motion-quilting without a ruler.
Personally, I am excited to find out what happens when I mix and match my rulers and designs and this method sure beats having to quilt it out to see if I like it!!
This past week I was able to finally finish the Brown Stripe quilt that I had started oh so long ago!!!
If you go back and read any of these posts…..piecing….. home machine quilting…..long-arm quilting ….. you will find that the piecing of this quilt was far easier than the quilting!!!
As I started using rulers on my home machine, I had tons of trouble getting over all of the seams, especially since I had OVERLY pieced the backing. This meant that there was just too much bulk under the needle.
Then I met Julio and he came home to make my quilting life easier…..but he didn’t…..at least at first!! But then I finally figured out how to make him work for me and, before I knew it, the quilting was done!!
I quilted all of the strip designs in the same manner, starting with a square in the center of the strip and then radiating parallel lines out toward the point of the strip.
For the alternating white blocks, I used a series of spinning rulers from Westalee and tried to do a different pattern in almost every block…..
I debated long and hard about how to quilt the background of the border pieces and started out with just a 1/4 inch echo along each of the blocks. Since that looked so good, I decided to add another echo line down the middle of the white border and am very happy with how it worked out.
I did do a bit of marking before I stitched….just to give me a registration point to know when and where to stop or to turn, etc…….
The final quilt looks great……
I have been reading a lot recently about staging your quilt photos so I decided to take this one outside and see what I could do. Michael went out to help…..
….and we got a few good photos, but my favorite one is when the wind caught the edge and threatened to send it into the neighbors yard!!
I am glad that this quilt is finally off of my To-Do list!!!
It proved to be a great learning experience and I am looking forward to starting another scrap strip quilt in the near future……
As my readers know, I am slowly….ever so slowly….. learning how to use rulers in my quilting!!
I purchased a number of rulers a month ago and have slowly been playing with them and trying to learn how to use them.
Today I want to demonstrate another of the Westalee rulers…. Spin-E-Fex #11…..
I talked about this one when I first received the rulers (check this post), and showed some examples of what could be stitched with it, but didn’t physically stitch it out for you.
So…..here it is…..
I am excited about how easy this particular ruler is to use and how many different variations can be quilted with it!!