FMQ with rulers is NOT for the faint hearted!!!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been working on the quilting for my Brown Stripe Quilt. I decided to do the entire quilt with rulers in the hopes that I will become more proficient as I go. Having said that, this is a nice quilt and I really don’t want to ruin it with poor quilting!!

With that in mind, I started making a list of things that I need to do EVERY TIME that I set up for FMQ with rulers. It looks like this…..

Without this list, I forget important things that made the quilting not work well….as you will soon see!!

I spent a fair amount of time playing with designs for the brown stripes…..

….and finally decided that I wanted to put a Chevron type design in each.

With the first few, I physically marked the center line of each block and also the starting square, but after using the ruler for a while, I noticed that there were perpendicular guidelines……

……that I could use for the first set of chevrons meaning that all I needed to mark was the center line and the mid point of the block.

When I started with the first block, my thread broke FOUR times and I moved too far off the line once meaning that I had to restart the quilting five different times and then tie off and bury the thread tails…..UGH!!! At this point I was having serious doubts about whether I wanted to use rulers anymore!!

I then remembered my list (from above) and started working thru the different items on it. First I realized that I hadn’t grabbed the Supreme Slider which made it hard to move the fabric around.

Then, I realized that I didn’t have the foot pressing hard enough on the quilt sandwich which was probably causing the thread shredding!!!

See….I should have looked at my list to BEGIN with!!!

The second block only had three new starts and the third block only had one. Fortunately, the next 12 went fairly smoothly so now I have accomplished 15 with 33 left to go.

One problem that I have been dealing with is skipped stitches and subsequent thread shredding when I am traveling a certain direction. I think it is happening for one of two reasons. Either I am not comfortable going in that particular direction so am jerking the quilt sandwich more OR it is moving in a direction that is opposite to how my needle is threaded, causing the thread to pull. As I work on the last 2/3rds of the blocks, I am going to try shifting my quilt sandwich slightly before I start traveling in that particular direction to see if I can alleviate the problem.

Somewhere along the line, I realized that I was trying to quilt the designs from top to bottom which meant that it was hard to see where I was going…..

Switching to a horizontal orientation made a lot of difference…..

So tomorrow I am prepped and ready to quilt a bunch more of the blocks…..

So, if someone hears screaming coming from Bishop, Georgia, just remind me to check the list!!!

ADDENDUM…..

I have finally figured out what is causing all of my problems!! The areas where the thread is shredding correspond to where the backing has been majorly pieced. It seems that when there are SO many seams to sew thru it messes with the tension and also the action of the needle!!! Here is the front and back…..

When I pieced this back, I was determined to use up all of the strip sets that I had left over. Next time I will keep things super simple!!!!

Tomorrow I will finish the quilting on the stripes, even if it means dealing with lots of stops and starts. Hopefully the designs in the light color areas wont be as hard to do since there wont be as many seams to deal with.

I am SUPER relieved to know what was causing my issues!!!!

Storage Solution

As I have increased my stash of machine quilting rulers, finding a way to store them has become problematic. Originally I had them in the bottom drawer of the storage unit next to my machine. That worked fine, but it was almost impossible to find the ONE ruler that I wanted to work with.

I put the question on the “Quilting with Rulers” Facebook group and they provided a number of possibilities but none of them was the perfect solution. Then I started searching on Amazon and found the perfect solution for the smaller rulers…..

They fit well and I noted the type of ruler on each of the tabs so they will be easy to find and easy to return to their spot…..

Even better is that the files can be securely closed…..

….and fit flat in my drawer…..

The few longer rulers fit well on the other side of the drawer.

PROBLEM SOLVED!!!!

You can purchase them on Amazon….

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Quilting around the border

In an effort to continue the practice of using rulers for Free -Motion quilting, I brought another top home from our guild Charity bee…..

I hung it on my design wall for a few days and fairly quickly decided exactly what I wanted to do!!

I started with a big flower in the center and then started adding diagonal borders flowing out from the middle. The reason that I wanted to do borders was because of a Christmas present that I received last December……

…..the Westalee Border Sampler Template set.

I spent a lot of “treadmill time” watching videos about how to use these rulers and found them to be extremely simple and effective!!

The first border that I quilted was the Continuous Heart…..

Next was the Braid…..

Then came the continuous loop

…..and finally the continuous fill pattern……

The final quilt design was pleasing and I did learn a lot in the process…..

I did learn one other thing with this project. When I quilted the first big flower in the center of the quilt, I had trouble with the foot dragging on the seams. But, when I moved the foot up higher, then the tension started messing up. I thought back to the last project (Meadow Art) and remembered that I had successfully changed the bobbin tension many times and it produced no dire effects, so I increased the bobbin tension with my quilting and it fixed all of the tension problems.

One other comment……..

As I have been watching videos and learning about the various rulers, I have noticed that the Westalee company goes for accuracy. Each ruler has lots of registration marks designed to help you keep everything in line.

The rulers designed by Angela Walters seem to be designed for fun quilting…..not that you cant be accurate with them, but they are designed for you to get on with the job!!

I can see where each type of ruler can be useful and actually like that I have options depending on what effect that I am trying to convey.

Of course, the only problem is that I can easily start accumulating quilting rulers in the same way that I do with fabric or threads and THAT is definitely a ……

A little bit of ditch stitching

As I was working on the charity quilt and practicing free-motion quilting using rulers, I played with using a straight ruler for stitching in the ditch.

Previously, I had felt like it would not be easy to keep the stitching IN the ditch, but I was pleasantly surprised by the results……

I can see this being especially helpful when I need to travel from one area on the quilt to another one!!

S-Curve Ruler for FMQ

I have been talking about the charity quilt that I quilted and used the time to practice free motion quilting using rulers. The first border that I quilted was using the S-Curve ruler from Angel Oak Stitchery…..

It took me a while to figure out how to use this ruler but it ended up being super simple to use and I love the design that it gives.

Here is a video showing how it works……

When I was exploring demonstration videos of using this shape, many of them used these lines as the spines for feather patterns. That would be interesting….something I need to try at some point.

So, one border is done…..three to go!!