Quilting With Rulers

Today I’m linking up with Amy’s Free Motion Quilting Adventures Ruler Work Rocks – A Link Party.  I have been following Amy for a few years and really wanted to try the rulers, but my Pfaff Quilt Expression (QE) 4.0 didn’t have a ruler foot. Finally last year, Westalee made one for my machine so I took Amy’s Craftsy class, Master Machine Quilting with Rulers! I practiced a little, then I used the rulers on these two quilts last fall:

Atlantic Flyway

 

Cozy Afternoon Tea at the Cottage

I have shown both of the quilts before here, but today, I’m going to show more details of the ruler (or template) work in each one.

This is a picture of the ruler foot attached to my QE 4.0. I do need to adjust the needle position to the right until the needle is in the center. I don’t know if I’m not getting the foot on correctly, but it’s the same amount each time and it quilts alright. This was October’s Minis and More quilt. I used the Westalee 12″ Arc/Straight Template to make the curved flower shape in the basket and the diamond in the sashing

The first quilt that I did ruler work on was The Atlantic Flyway, pattern by Deb Tucker.

I started by quilting in the ditch around the star and the flying geese.  For this quilt, I only had the template set that came with the ruler foot. I used the Westalee circle template to make the center of my flower, then used the Westalee 12″ Arc/Straight to make the flower petals. I quilted on the inside and outside of the star points which gave me a nice overlap to quilt some graduated circles. I also did pebbling inside the center circle. Just a note, I do switch to my open toe free motion foot when I’m not using rulers. It is easier for me to see what I’m doing and where I am going with it on.

Then I quilted arcs on both sides of the flying geese. The template wasn’t quite long enough to go from point to point on the outside edge of the geese, so I moved it as I went around the geese circle and into the sashing strip. Next, I added 1/2 ” curved cross-hatching on the inside of the star points. For the corner section, I used the arc to make my first line in the corners, then echoed 1/4 ” away. I used 1/2 ” curved cross-hatching in the corners, fudging a little to get to the centers.

I drew a lot of different designs for the outside geese. I stared at it and couldn’t quite decide what I wanted to do. I finally decided on the curved arcs outside of the geese. Then I quilted a feathered fan inside each of the geese.

I used the straight edge of the ruler in the boarder. You can still see a little bit of my white pencil where I had to mark the lines inside the triangle because the spacing didn’t match the template marks.

This post is getting long, but I hope you’ll stick with it because I want to show you some of the work I did on the Cozy Afternoon Tea at the Cottage quilt. This was the 2015 Cozy Afternoon Block of the Month by Jacqulynne Steves. By the time I was ready to quilt it, I had added the 12″ QP Curve by Linda Hrcka and the 8″ Arc by Westalee, which I bought from Amy’s shop.

For each applique block, I used the 12″ Westalee Arc/Straight Template to quilt an arc from point to point on the outside of the center applique piece. I carried my swirl quilting out into the arc, then used the arc as the stem for a feather circle. I also used that template to quilt the curved cross-hatching in the corners of each block.

By this time, Amy was working on her sampler quilt. I liked how she quilted the large setting triangle using two arcs, then quilted straight cross-hatching on the inside. So I duplicated it. Thank’s Amy for the idea. The spacing is 1/2″ although I wish I had used 3/4″ instead, but I wasn’t going to rip it all out. The corner triangles are quilted with 1/2 ” curved cross-hatching. I used the 12″ QP Curve because the triangles were so large.

You can really see the quilting better on the back, especially in the solid pieces.

I would like to thank Amy for hosting the Ruler Work Rocks – Link Party. I’ve learned a lot from reading her blog, watching her YouTube videos and now her Craftsy class. Please check her out.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you will take up the challenge to use rulers on your domestic machine.