Showing posts with label ruler work. Show all posts

Thursday, September 03, 2026

FMQ a Baby Quilt and I Quilted This!

Hi and welcome 😊 I hope that September finds you well. I'm so grateful that the back-to-school rush is no longer a thing in my family - I don't miss those very stressful days! I've been quilting the first baby quilt of three for JJ's friends. Let's see how I'm doing.

Square Dance is getting quilted

This week I quilted-in-the-ditch the first baby quilt. The title of the pattern is Square Dance, so I'm sticking with that! I used a light grey for the top and a light blue thread for the bobbin. I'll be using a light blue in the bobbin when the top thread is pale, and a darker blue to match darker thread. That's the plan since my tension will cooperate 😀

First block quilted - ruler and FMQ

I started by using a ruler to quilt the top triangle of the block. I gave up after that section was done. It was easier, faster and more accurate to draw the lines and FMQ them. That's because I have a generic ruler foot that is not very good. One day I will buy the proper Janome ruler foot - hopefully that will help.

Here's Square Dance with all of the blocks stitched-in-the-ditch. The top light green block has been quilted, except for the rainbow centre block. I'll probably be FMQ it with rainbow shapes that I learned at the Free Motion Quilting Summit 2026.

Square Dance stitched-in-the-ditch

Back of the quilt with extra novelty squares

September's One Monthly Goal (OMG)

I would love to have Square Dance all quilted by the end of the month, but that may be too ambitious, so I'll aim to have half of it quilted 😉. Wish me luck!

What I learned

I enjoy sandwiching small quilts - it's just so much easier!
The back of the quilt came together easily. The pattern called for one extra row but I was done, so I added the 6" blocks to the back. It worked out perfectly 😊
I was disappointed with the ruler quilting. I guess I had forgotten how bad the generic ruler foot can be. I was not in a patient mood, so out came my FMQ foot. All was good 😍

I Quilted This!

Welcome to the I Quilted This! linking party that celebrates quilting on a domestic machine or custom quilting on a long-arm. Feel free to link up and share any recent project, even if you're not quilting it!

Here are the posts that included FMQ, ruler work and walking foot quilting last week. Thanks for linking up 😊 and consider grabbing the button.

Kat from Scrapbox Quilts FMQ this stunning panel following Angela Walter's challenge, Arcs, Curves and Points. This is the challenge I was going to use to do ruler quilting on the Square Dance quilt, but the rulers have been put away. Kat isn't a fan of the dark panel but it is a stunning finish. You'll want to expand her photo to get a better look at the FMQ.

Kat's FMQ on Angela Walter's Arcs, Curves and Points panel

Diann at Little Penguin Quilts quilted her last block and is now putting together her Quilt-as-you-go (QAYG) colourful Patchwork Hearts quilt.

Diann quilting her last colourful patchwork heart

Diann is ready to put the whole Patchwork Hearts quilt together!

Vicki of Vicki's Crafts and Quilting has finished many quilts this week. Here are a couple of them. You can check them all out on her post. The first one below is a lovely disappearing 9 patch. Those blues really play well together! My favourite is this colourful table topper. I just love the pieced border!

Vicki's blue disappearing 9 patch

Vicki's colourful fall topper

Margo Yang of MY Quilts and Crafts got her gorgeous denim quilt finished. It's called She's A Star. Let's hope it'll be hanging in the Quilt National 27!

Margo's She's A Star

Sandra of mmm quilts finished a quilt for her daughter, Holiday Star. It was quilted very simply but I love the little extra Sandra quilted in the secondary blocks.

Sandra's dramatic Holiday Star

Debbie of A Quilter's Table made this great improv quilt - Plethora. Debbie quilted this in an uneven grid with a number of coloured thread, for a plethora of fabric and thread. Check out her post for more details.

Debbie's Plethora of fabric and thread

It's now your turn 😍

Monday, July 29, 2024

Table Scraps and Quilting with Rulers

Hi and welcome! I've finished my July Table Scraps Challenge and took out my quilting rulers to see what I could do. It was interesting and productive 😊 Let me share this weekend's learning with you.

July's Table Scraps Challenge

You may have seen a few preview pictures of my quilting in the last post. It turns out that July's colour was aqua, not teal, although teal is just the darker form of aqua. Anyway there is a little bit of aqua in this piece as well as lots of teal. The theme was butterfly and this was the highlight of the "Butterflies Table Topper".

Butterflies Table Topper

Notice in the image below, the milk can that my girlfriend's painted for me. The fall side matches this month's Butterflies Table Topper.

Butterflies Table Topper matches the fall side of the milk can

For the binding, I used a print of small colourful butterflies on a white background. I wouldn't normally use a light fabric but I'm glad that I did. Yes, a darker aqua fabric would blend in but this is cute and fanciful, just like the runner. Yay for doing something outside of my comfort zone!😁

Butterflies Table Topper and phlox

Here are a couple of detail views of the quilting. This was done with rulers and free motion quilting (FMQ)

Some of the ruler and FMQ

The three butterflies

Quilting with Rulers

As I mentioned in the last post, I knew that I had done some quilting with rulers and taken a course with Silly Moon. I had never posted it. When I found my practice pieces, I remembered why. Although the course was very good, I had problems with the universal darning foot that I had used with the rulers. If you don't get it just right, the tension can be off, which is what had happened. I had also used spray adhesive on my quilting samples and it had left stains. After these trials, I just put everything away!

However, after quilting with the rulers on the Butterflies Table Topper, I did figure out how to adjust the darning foot so that it worked fine. I watched a video on YouTube that suggested that I use a credit card underneath the foot to make sure that it was adjusted properly. The credit card has to slide easily under the foot. It worked!

Adjusting the tension of the darning
foot with an old credit card

Here are some of the samples that I quilted with the Silly Moon Eggie rulers.

Overlapping one Eggie ruler

Using the straight Eggie 6 ruler

Using various Eggie rulers

You can see in the image below some of the ruler work.

At the top, I used a large Eggie (oval) ruler to make two lines and then stitch pebbles between them.
Underneath the first butterfly, you can see the overlapping semi-circles and the straight lines over them. I used different sizes of the Eggie rulers and then the straight ruler at the top.
For the bottom butterfly, I used the straight ruler to make some of the straight "V" lines.
Finally, to the right of the bottom butterfly, the larger Eggie ruler was used to make overlapping curves.

FMQ and ruler work in the Butterflies Table Topper

While looking for my sandwich pieces, I found these four samplers that I made in 2017 as part of the Learning Quilt-A-Long I hosted. For the month of October that year, I made four scrappy samplers and used different batting for each of them. I then quilted, bound them and washed them. It turns out that on these small samplers, there wasn't much difference between them except for the silk/polyester batting, which was so much thinner but fine to quilt on. If you want to read more about this experiment, the links are below.

Four samplers now being used as placemats

What I learned

Looking at my sampler placemats, I noticed that my FMQ was possibly better than it is now, several years later. I would attribute that to taking my time back then, as opposed to just doing it now! I do tend to just go for it instead of preparing properly and FMQ carefully. I think that I need to learn to slow my FMQ down.
I never thought of using my square samplers as placemats because in my mind, placemats are rectangular. Since joining in the Table Scraps Challenge, I noticed that a few people make their placemats square - so now I have four lovely new placemats. 😊
I'm glad that I played with quilting with the rulers. It really is great for straight lines (so I'll keep them handy) but I'm really not sure what else to do with them except for those ovals and curved lines. I suspect that I won't be investing in many more rulers, unless I figure out what else to do with them. If you have any ideas, please let me know!

Thursday, July 25, 2024

Stitching and FMQ on Free Motion Mavericks

Hi and welcome. I've had a great relaxing week by the pool. It turns out that 20 minutes in the pool is all I need, so I'm glad that it's not my pool! 😎 I've read lots of books and am slowly putting stuff away in my studio. It was a good week and I'm slowly starting to get back into the groove. I hope that you had a great week also.

Free Motion Quilting (FMQ) in teal

I've put my teal and other blue scraps together to make a small runner. Here is a preview of the final piece. Despite not having the correct foot, I used a couple of my rulers to quilt these. I also did some FMQ because once the first line is stitched, it's relatively easy to follow it to make the subsequent lines without the ruler.

Teal lines made using a ruler and FMQ

The Table Scraps Challenge for July is actually aqua, related to teal, and the theme is butterflies, so this first block is perfect.

FMQ following the fabric lines

Quilting using an oval ruler and FMQ the centre

I've quilted about a third of the piece. Since July's last weekend is in a couple of days, I'll be posting this finish before next week's post - so keep a lookout for it! 😁

Second Kawandi style quilt finished

I finished my second Kawandi style quilt yesterday. I really love it and it was much easier the second time around. I'm thinking of starting another one, but this time with the scraps organised by colour. The down side is organizing the scraps. That could slow me down....we'll see 😊

Second Kawandi style quilt finished

Here are the two finished pieces.

Two Kawandi style quilts

Here they are as seen from the back. I took advantage of the busy back to hide knots when it was too difficult to slip the needle underneath one of the fabrics. That can happen when you get closer to the middle and fabric pieces all overlap.

Two Kawandi style quilts, seen from the back

What I learned

Quilting with rulers using an ordinary darning foot is not easy and the stitching is not as even, but it can be done!
I bought a universal foot to use for the rulers but it's too fiddly. If it's not at the perfect height it affects the tension. I got tired of fiddling around with it.
I'll eventually buy the Janome foot but I did want to make sure that I would used the rulers first. This trial did help and I would use the rulers with the correct foot.
It's great though that I can stitch with the ruler and then use my FMQ abilities to follow the line. Another way would be to mark the lines with a FriXion pen when it's not on solid dark colours (because they can leave a ghost line).
I looked throughout my blog but only found one mention of quilting with rulers. I did take a virtual class through Silly Moon in March 2021 but things were so busy that I never blogged about it. I'll have to find my samples to see how I did!
I really enjoyed making this second Kawandi style quilt.
I made sure that my top fabrics were slightly over the edges so that the backing fabric wouldn't show.
As I mentioned, the only time that I made a knot at the back of the piece was when it was difficult to make the knot underneath the top fabric.
Using a busy backing helped with the knots but you can't see the stitches as well as on solid fabrics.
Part of the joy of making Kawandi style quilts is being able to use random fabrics as you go. I'm hoping that organising the fabrics ahead of time won't take the fun out of it.
A solution to that would be to have a few small piles of fabric sorted by colour and then dipping into them as you go. Since the fabrics are applied from the outside to the centre, this would have to be taken into account. Hopefully it won't be too complicated.
BTW, the mosquito netting proved to be great but I'm now trying to figure out how to keep it dry when we get a storm. I did buy some plastic tablecloths lined with flannel but the wind made it useless, so I'll have to attach it somehow. I'll let you know how I do!😊

Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 491 of Free Motion Mavericks. InLinks was down but it's back up. Sorry for the delay! Thanks for linking up this week. Here are the two projects from last week that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting.

Gretchen of Gretchen's Little Corner has finished quilting "Blooms" another of her smaller quilts. I love the blocks with the hexies 😊! She mostly stitched-in-the-ditch and then inside the centre yellow hexie. What a pretty quilt!

"Blooms" quilted by Gretchen

Baptist Fans for the borders of "Blooms"

Frédérique finished the first of her two Temperature quilts. This one is for her mother. I just love how she included the weather symbols and legend. She attached the legend with small Velcro dots so that it can be taken down to read the quilt.

Frédérique's unique Quilt Météo (Temperature Quilt)

Frédérique used some of her pretty machine stitches for the various borders in her quilt. Not only is her quilt pretty but a great reminder of the weather in 2023. From those oranges and red, it looks like the Alps got very hot!

Temperature Quilt with fancy machine stitches

It's now your turn!

Thursday, April 30, 2020

Fun FMQ samples at Free Motion Mavericks

Hi and welcome to week 278 of Free Motion Mavericks. I finally have some free motion quilting (FMQ) to share with you as well as a Big Mandala finish. Yeah! 😊

Sample FMQ

After so much hand stitching and then quilting with my walking foot, I was getting desperate for some FMQ time!

I've been watching Angela Walters' latest FMQ Challenge on YouTube. She is doing some fun variations with the serpentine design, including a Plume Feather (links are in Related links below). I've been wanting to try the plume feather so this was the perfect opportunity. Here are my first three practice pieces.

Third Plume feather with a border

First Plume feather

Second Plume feather
within a diamond

FMQ the serpentine design is not my favourite, but again, now that I've practiced it, it's not so bad - and it is versatile, especially with the variations that Angela suggested.

Practicing the serpentine design and adding variations

The serpentine design with feathers and a lotus flower

All of the borders above, including the diamond outline were done with my FMQ ruler. It's getting a little easier to work with.

Big Mandala & April OMG finish

I made this improv pieced Mandala for the first week of the Project Quilting Quarantine. Since the rules were slightly elastic because there were no prizes, I posted it even if it wasn't quite finished. I just had some beading and final FMQ to add. This is also my April One Monthly Goal (OMG), so it needs to be posted soon!

BIG Mandala beaded

Details of the FMQ leaves in the last ring

What I learned

It was good to see improvements in my Plume feathers through the three pieces.
I'm still struggling with the serpentine design. It seems that sometimes I get it and other times not so much.
Angela said that it's easier to do the serpentine design in a smaller space such as 3" - 4" rather than 5" - 6". She's right - it's easier to keep the shape in a smaller space, but still not easy for me.
I took my finished picture of the Big Mandala before I FMQ the last ring. When I realised this, I went back to take more pictures but it was very blustery - so only the detailed picture has the FMQ on the last ring.

Free Motion Mavericks

Thanks to everyone who linked up last time! There are some great quilting and quilting events to keep us productive and sane going on. Have you joined in any of them yet? Last link up Sandra of mmm! quilts had a lovely finish, even if she can't get it to her daughter quite yet. If you didn't see her Storm at Sea, go have a look!