Angela Walters Shares Tips for Machine Quilting with Curved Rulers

hi i'm angela walters from quilting is my therapy and in this video i'm gonna help you get over a common frustration of quilting with curved rulers i can still think back to the very first time I tried quilting with a curved ruler on my long arm let me just assure you that it did not look good at all turns out it might be just a little trickier than I thought now over the years I finally mastered quilting with curved rulers through a little trial and error mostly error in this video I'm gonna show you how to quilt with curved rulers on a long arm and give you some tips to make it easier now if you don't have a long arm you should still keep watching because I'm going to show you how to quilt serpentine lines and two-inch borders with Squiggy and I'll show you how to use Squiggy to quilt wavy lines it's gonna be awesome so let's get to quilting to help us learn how to quilt along curved rulers I'm gonna use Squiggy positioning the ruler what I'm gonna do is use my hands to hold it in place and I'm gonna use a firm grip but I'm not gonna push down or strain my hands a lot I'm just gonna make sure that it's in place now when your quilting a curve the thing that makes it tricky is that your point of contact on the foot is gonna be different so for instance let's say I'm going along this curve right here my point of contact is at the bottom of my foot but as I begin to work my way around that curve now it's changed now I'm contacting on the right side and then as I go around the top it's going to be touching again the bottom side as I come around to the side it's going to go on the left now what's gonna happen is as I'm moving around I want to be sure that I'm kind of pulling the machine into the ruler and what that's gonna do is make sure that I make it around this curve if I don't what happens I'll start quilting and it will kind of go off into space like this and if you do that believe me you're completely normal I'm gonna take my time and work my way around this curve now what some people will do is we think we have to do this whole curve in one movement and that's not the case take your time reposition your hands do whatever you need to do to quote that curve now I actually designed Squiggy to quilt serpentine lines so if you can imagine even though it looks like a weird shaped ruler what I'm using is actually half of the ruler to quilt a serpentine line I can actually quote from the left to the right or to the right to the left and that's going to make it nice and versatile and over here I've went ahead and made some borders to practice quilting it in okay so I have my two inch border and what I'm going to do is use the inside of my ruler to quilt that serpentine line now most long arms have about a quarter of an inch between the needle and the foot so what I'm going to do is position the ruler like so and these needle stops are going to help make sure that my ruler is straight to my seam then what I'm going to do is quilt along this side of the ruler right here and as soon as I touch that seam I'm gonna stop even if it's not perfectly in the center so once I'm here I'm gonna move my ruler over just a bit I'm going to travel down along that seam about a quarter or half of an inch depending on how much spacing I want in between my lines travel down here and then I'm going to reposition my ruler again I'm gonna use my needle stops to line that with the scene I'm gonna hold it in place right here if I need to stop I'm gonna stop reposition my hands reposition the ruler if necessary and then continue until I touch the seam that's the trick as soon as I touch the seam I want to stop and I'm going to come back down a little bit [Applause] and if here I've come just a little bit away I'm not quite there so I kind of bring it right into that scene reposition and come right back up the outside of Squiggy can be used to quote those serpentine lines in three inch borders and here you can see I've already have that quilted out position the rulers gonna be very similar except I'm gonna run along the outside of the ruler and not the inside I'm still going to use my needle stops to help me gauge where I'm at and still make sure that reference line is running somewhat straight with the scene once I'm ready to quilt I'm gonna use my hand to hold it in place and I'm gonna remember to keep the point of contact to the ruler even if that means that changes on the particular side of the foot so holding it in place flipping along until I hit that seam you can see there I had my first serpentine line I'm going to travel down along that seam depending on how much spacing I want and then reposition my ruler again using my needle stop and my reference lines to help keep it even going up until I hit the seam and then I have my second line there now you notice I'm turning the ruler around and using it almost like a straight edge you don't have to do that I could just freehand down that side but that's gonna help me make sure that it's nice and in the seam let's do one more again I'm using the reference points on my ruler to help make sure that this ruler is straight to the seam and then quilting along the outside to that line there you can see I have my first few serpentine lines now let's pretend you're actually quilting a row of sashings I could go ahead and quilt down this whole row or I can alternate into each sashing as I go on this one I've quilted along this length but what I can do is coming to the next one I can rotate my ruler and quote my serpentine line in the opposite direction until I hit the seam and so there I went one direction up here and if I wanted to I can go ahead alternating directions and go to the other side let's go ahead and work our way back travel down repositioning my ruler again I'm looking at that needle stop to help keep it on that line this reference line right here is also helping me make sure I'm going to end up in the right spot and going up all I have to do is turn my ruler around reposition [Applause] we'll go back up to the next side and see there I'm starting to fill in those borders with those serpentine lines now I'm going to keep repeating that until I fill in this area [Applause] I'm just loving how easy it is to go from one direction to the other to quickly quilt those areas now let me show you how you can use Squiggy to quilt long wavy lines on your whole quilt so but I'm ready to quilt a wave what I'm gonna do is position my ruler and go all along the outer edge now these needle stocks are going to help me reposition the ruler to make it continuous without marking when it quilt along here all the while remembering that I need to pull the machine into that ruler if I need to stop and reposition my hands I can we don't have to do this in one movement I can take my time but I'm in a quilt along until I get to that needle stop right there and you can see I have my first kind of curve after I'm done quilting that I'm going to take the ruler just reposition it over here and I'm going to repeat going around it again here I've quilted a couple more beforehand so you can see this line is continuing on now that I finished a wave what I could do is I could travel down and echo that shape if I want to waves that are echoing or I could actually flip this ruler around so I get more of a elongated kind of curvy look and that's really kind of fun it's a little trickier though when you're quilting this way because now all of a sudden my hand is gonna be in the way of the ruler so what I'm going to do is quote part of it and then reposition my hands and quilt the rest stop and I could either hold it from back here or come to the side just a little bit which I'm going to do and continue along that ruler and here you can see I'm starting to get that pointy overly kind of shape let's do it again the rulers gonna go upside down needle stop - needle stop working my way around the ruler if I need to stop and reposition that's where this grip comes in handy it's gonna keep the ruler in place and there you can see I have my second one and there I have my three lines what I'm going to actually do is quilt the inside of my curve this time so when I line it up and quilt along its gonna fill in this space with a differently shaped curve and now I'm gonna pretty much do the same on the other gear and now I'm going to do the same thing on this side and there I'm getting those really fun overall shape and key imagine how cool it's gonna look when I come and do the next row amazing the most important thing to think about when using curved rulers is that I'm gonna take my time going around that curve I'm going to make sure that I'm pulling that machine into the different sides of the curve and remembering that if I need to stop and reposition my hands that I can it's more important to take it slow than to go fast and not have good control of your ruler so what do you think hopefully when you try quilting a curved rulers on your long arm or your sewing machine hopefully it'll be easier than you think but if you have any questions about it please let me know leave them in the comments below I get on there and try to answer them as much as I can plus if you want to find any of the products that I've used in this video you can just check out the description box below well thanks so much for joining me for another video happy quilting and I'll see you soon

Channel: Angela Walters

Views: 66,036

Rating: 4.9449415 out of 5

Keywords: iMovie

Id: MZho3w7WcSE

Length: 10min 44sec (644 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 21 2018