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!!
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!!
…..SIX new Westalee rulers designed to make wonderful wreath/circular designs!!!!
I immediately pulled out the first one and started playing!!! My first choice was the Spin-E-Fex #11…..
I was happy to see that each ruler came with a long strip of grip tape!!
I started out with the one of the simplest designs that can be made with this this ruler…..
This was quilted by placing the more rounded point at the center of the block…..
….and stitching all the way around the ruler….
When you get back to the center, you simply line the ruler up on the next registration mark……
….and sew again!!
The second design that I made used the same ruler but alternated which end was placed at the center…..
The final design used 16 registration marks and quilted each round with the ruler in the same orientation. I had one small slip-up but it still looks good…..
These are only a few of the designs that can be done with this one ruler…..and I have FIVE other new ones to play with after that!!!
