Exploring with More Rulers for Rulerwork on Domestic Sewing Machines

hello welcome back to our creative demos i'm loretta hayes from hay sewing machine company and today we are going to cover more with machine quilting with a ruler you guys had such great feedback with us we did a couple of weeks ago i did a basic machine ruler work demo and so we got so much feedback that we decided that we would show you a few more shapes so today we're going to start with a triangle ruler this is a handy quilter ruler so it's a quarter of an inch so it's going to work on a long arm it's going to work on a bernina with a 72 foot it's going to work on a lot of like higher end baby lock machines if your machine needs a lower smaller ruler to work on the foot this ruler may not work but we may be able to get you one that's very similar so if you're uncertain about what rulers work with your machine just call us or email us and we can get that sorted out for you so we're going to go ahead and get started um the the four rulers that i'm going to show you today are so so simple to work with and so this ruler here with our triangle has actually two shapes it's got an equilateral triangle and it's got an isosceles triangle and and that is all the more math that we're going to be doing today um so we you can do very simple designs with this very easily so you can see this is our equilateral triangle uh and this is our isosceles and so to start with what we're going to do is we're going to draw four lines two lines excuse me we need four points so we're going to come in and for the camera i am drawing with a ballpoint pen so that you guys can see this but please do not do this with a ballpoint pen use any of your marking tools that you would normally use for quilting so it could be chalk it could be an air erasable pen it could be a water erasable pen could be the friction pens where you iron them off but not a marker and not a ballpoint pen as i'm doing here today so we're going to take our rotary ruler we're going to draw our first line we're going to line up our rotary ruler on the line so that we get one that is 90 degrees and then we are going to draw our line easier said than done that'll be good enough all right so how we're going to start creating [Applause] these cute little designs is we're going to pick our shape we're going to set up our machine for ruler work so to do that we're going to drop our feed dogs we're going to put a ruler work foot on and so very important that you are using a ruler work foot if you take a look at it in comparison to a regular free motion foot you can see how thin this one is where this one has a much larger piece we can then take our ruler and our ruler will go on you know up against the foot but in the case of this foot it would go up and then it would jump over and our needle would get that which is not a good thing all right so we're going to go ahead and put our ruler foot on and if you haven't watched the the previous video you can go to youtube and check that out for more details on setting up your machine so we're going to come in i think i'm going to do the isosceles triangle so we're going to take our isosceles triangle i've got my handy grip on the back of the ruler very important to put handy grip on the back of your ruler so that when you push down on your ruler you're going to be able to move your entire project if you don't have handy grip what happens is the ruler slides on top of the project and it's the difference really between oh this is ruler work and this is fun and oh this is ruler work and this is not fun so we're going to start out we're going to put our presser foot down we're going to do a stitch in the center and we're going to pull up our bobbin thread so that we have both threads on top of our quilt and then we're going to take a couple of stitches just little short ones shifting your fabric just to take a tiny bit so that we can tack on and then we can go in there with our scissors and we can clip that thread put our presser foot back down and i'm going to take and i'm going to line up the line that is boldly printed or etched in the back of my ruler it's exactly one quarter of an inch from the edge of my ruler and i'm going to line that up with my drawn line and so here we go we're going to push down on the ruler we're going to sew forward and what's really awesome about these triangles is that with the triangles you're going to hit the edge of the triangle so there's no guessing as to oh should i stop the ruler will stop you i then going to take and i'm going to move the next direction so remember we're moving the whole thing we're not doing a pivoting situation we're just going to go ahead until our foot hits the back of that and then we're coming right back to the center at that point we're going to leave our quilt the same which is really awesome because you know on this little sample it would not have been a big deal for me to change the position of the fabric but when you have a large quilt and you've got fabric wrapped underneath the free arm of the machine it's super important that you don't have to rotate that quilt so we're just going to move the the ruler so that we're going across and we're going gonna then sew down up and down again so we're coming back to the center now nice little trick with ruler work if you come back to the center and you're not perfectly on the center let's say the ruler shifted just a just a tiny little bit what's great about it is you can take that extra stitch get yourself lined back up in the center and then you can go ahead and you can line up again now when i line up on this one the the ruler is actually behind my machine and you know my x-ray vision it just isn't what it used to be so what i'm going to do is i'm going to like stand up i'm going to put my head over the top here and i'm going to go ahead and check that and make sure that that line is where i want it to be then we'll take off and we'll do our next shape and back down to the center again so one more will rotate again this time we can see it a little bit better and so we'll go ahead and sew out our last shape come back to the center move your your ruler towards the middle and you can do one or two stitches to tack off bring that needle up bring that foot up and then you can go in there and trim your thread get your ruler out of the way and you can go ahead and trim the back so if we flip it around on the back you can then see that your um your design just looks so nice you know you don't see those lines of course when you're marking your lines those lines are going to come off as well on there but it's super simple pattern this would be fabulous if you're doing say like a charm square quilt uh something where you have maybe a block where you have a center block maybe on point um just a really easy pattern to do and it looks like you spent a lot of time drawing it out and we only draw you know two lines no big deal so what happens if you would like to do say a border so the border we could do either the equilateral triangle or the isosceles triangle um so we're going to come in i'm going to line up on a line so normally if you were doing a border this would be the seam where the border is coming together so we're going to take and do a stitch pull that bobbin thread up and then put that foot down where we brought the bobbin thread up and we'll do just a couple of stitches to tack off on excuse me we're gonna go in and we're gonna clip that thread get that out of the way and so put our presser foot down we're going to snuggle right into the edge of that ruler the corner of it and there's an opening where you can get this in and out so like if i wanted to change my triangle at some point and i wanted to go to the isosceles triangle i can do that really easily with these openings but the other cool thing about doing this with the border is that opening if you line up the the edge of that that small edge that's going to line up right with your seam so you always have this great visual to work with so when i do a border as opposed to doing the complete triangle i'm only going to use two sides of the triangle so we're going to go up to the top point we're going to come down to the bottom point we'll hit our line and we'll pause if your machine has needle stopped down this is a great place to use that let the needle stop in the fabric and then we're simply going to pull our ruler towards us so that the edge of the foot is now snuggled into that corner and we're simply going to repeat that again and again so back down to the line we pause we slide the ruler [Music] and so in doing that we have created this really cool triangle border now this is just one pass of the ruler if you wanted to make it a little more jazzy one of the things that we could do is we could take the edge of the ruler and use it as a straight ruler and i'm going to stitch back about halfway to the the center of this the base of this triangle so we're going to come back and how i'm eyeballing this is i lined up one of the grids on the ruler with the point so now i'm directly across from from that if you look if you have a bernina and you have a 72 foot if you look on the inside of the the foot there's actually marks doing 12 o'clock six o'clock nine o'clock and three o'clock so you can actually see those marks lined up there so now that i'm halfway back i can pick up my foot i can put my ruler back underneath and this time we're gonna work backwards so i'm going to line up here i'm just going to make sure that my grid line is lined up and i'm straight and so i can come in slide the ruler make sure my lines are lined up a little bit of aerobic sewing and let's do one more [Music] and we would tack off and we have our border so you could run a single pass this is the isosceles triangle this is the equilateral triangle could you see if you were doing a sashing between blocks rather than a border how cool that would be and how easy it would be to create that design without having to do any flipping of the quilt or pivoting or turning of the quilt and the angles are always perfect because you're just following the ruler so that is our first triangle ruler okay what we learned with this one we're going to use in the next one and the next one is going to be uh the leafy template it looks like this so you've got two leaves you've got a leaf that has a round end and you have a leaf that has a pointy end so we're going to go ahead and we're going to make a flower with this one and so with the flower you can see i drew four lines for this so we drew the the uh 12 to six nine to three and then the diagonal lines and you can do that with your ruler so that's easy enough to do you can draw your lines the the up and down lines in the side to sideline not really a problem it's the diagonal lines that you want to pay attention to so if you are doing your diagonal lines with a rotary ruler if you line up the 45 degree line so the one that runs down the middle of the ruler with your straight line get the tip of the ruler right to the center mark there you can draw your first part of the line and then you can come in line it up slide the ruler up a little bit further and draw your second part of the line and then tip the ruler over line up that 45 degree line with a straight line there get your half line going here and then finish out the rest of the line don't know why but my pen just wants to die on that last line there we go terrific so not difficult to draw but here's the thing you know that i am not the math girl so you can cheat if you get to doing a lot of this handy quilter makes a template that is called the eight point cross hair ruler this is not a ruler for sewing it is a ruler for marking and you'll see that there are lines in it that have you have a um slot and so you can mark your lines really easily if your pen doesn't die again [Applause] my cameraman just handed me my pen again thank you pam all right so we've got our lines and then you'll see in the center there is a little dot so if you get to doing a lot of these things by all means do the template because it's so much easier all right so i already did a flower with the pointy end so we're gonna do one with the round end so we're gonna start out by landing on the dot we're gonna take one stitch we're gonna pull our bobbin thread sure we are a couple too many stitches and if you get that first just break your thread pull it back out again this is real life right all right that's so much better definitely want to get that bobbin thread up on top if you leave it underneath it's so going to get into trouble murphy's law you know and we'll clip our threads all right so we're going to do the round one so our foot's going to go down and we're going to snug our foot right into the notch so it won't go any further we're at the back here going to line up the the notch that is the line that's lined uh dr etched on the bottom of the ruler so that i've got that perfectly straight and then up we go and around and back to the center now if you are doing an 8 point or you get really excited you're going to do 16 or if you do 32 it looks like spirograph little trick instead of moving to the next position like you would be doing a clock if you sew the first one so i'm going to say that this is my 12 o'clock pedal you will get less thread bulk in the center if you then go and you do the six o'clock petals so always do the opposite petal to the one that you're actually stitching so we're coming along we're gonna come back so we're going to come back to the center now i'm going to pick a direction so i'm going to pick 3 o'clock i'm going to line up and go ahead and sew that petal and come back and now i'm going to flip around and do the nine o'clock one [Music] and come back and honestly this could be a terrific design right here just with four petals but we're gonna do eight so we're gonna pop that foot down we're gonna pick another direction go back around do the opposite if you're not sure hop up and poke your head out the back to check it out and then let's move and do the last one [Music] and one more and we have our flower come back to that center do just a little tack step and then go ahead and bring up your foot and your needle and clip your thread and so you end up with this lovely little daisy and it can be a round-ended daisy or it could be a pointy-ended daisy if we added 16 we would then be doing petals in the middle there and you would get this great secondary pattern in the center where the stitching lines overlap on there so that is the leafy template now our next template is going to be a hexagon so this is the hexagon ruler uh it is called the hq hexi one and a half inch because that's the size that it's going to do and just so that you know handy quilter does two different size hexis so they also do a three inch hexi as well so the techniques that i'm going to do with the small one you could also do with the large one if you're doing bigger quilts so when you're looking at the hexagon there's so many things that you can do with a hexagon this is probably my favorite and this is the one that we're going to do okay this one actually we'll do this one because you've seen kind of this effect this one here is also really cool the hexagon creates this star effect so what's the difference between this one and this one it is the number of lines that you have drawn so on this one i drew the the six o'clock to 12 o'clock the three o'clock to nine o'clock and then the 45 degrees and we did it exactly how as i just did the leafy pattern we started here i sewed around the first one i flipped it to the other side i sewed around the next one i went to the three o'clock and i did eight of them and you can see how when they overlap you get these wonderful patterns that develop that are just like happy accidents this one here is the six line design so i drew six lines so the the trick to this is not the sewing of it it's the drawing of the lines getting the lines perfect but let me show you a little trick we have a hexagon ruler right it's got six sides so what we're going to do is we're going to use the ruler to help us draw our lines so we're going to come in we're going to make a mark right at the notch of each one of the corners of the ruler so now all i have to do is take my rotary ruler line up the two lines opposite to each other the two dots excuse me and you're going to draw your first line then we're going to go ahead and we're going to do the same thing on the next set and then one more set and we now have perfectly spaced lines for our hexi so when you go to sew this we'll sew a portion of it we're going to start out the same way we're going to put our hexy ruler underneath we're going to jump into the center we're going to do one stitch seem to be having a problem with that this morning there we go and then we're going to do a little tack on and then clip our thread so when we put the foot down this time we're going to line up we're going to line up the notch on a line and if you look up here i'm going to line up the corner of the ruler and we're simply going to go ahead and sew around and once again the ruler kind of stops you you get to the end you know to the corner and the other side kind of prompts you to turn so we're just going around the the center there then we're going to come and we're going to do the opposite side so we're going to flip that ruler so that the notch is here and the notch is lined up on the line there and then we can go ahead and we can [Music] stitch and we're back to the center we're then going to line up on our next one [Music] spin your ruler around make sure your line is lined up up there [Music] and then our last ones back to the center and one more slide it around do your little tack pick up your foot and your needle and clip your thread so this kind of design is super visually complicated but so easy to do when you're actually sewing it out and no almost no marking whatsoever now if you wanted to use your hexi for a border same kind of concept as we were looking for our triangles so i started with my hexagon ruler here i sewed all the way around i needed to get to so that the i could shift the ruler so i sewed over the last seam uh excuse me the first seam actually let's do it guys because i don't think i'm explaining it very well so let's go ahead and do sometimes it's easier seen than said all right so we have a complete hexagon right so we're doing our border so now i need to get back over here so i'm just going to sew over that same line before i move the ruler and then i'll go ahead and slide it into the corner here all right we come to the corner we go ahead and we sew coming back there slide the ruler and just keep on going so what i love about the hexagon [Music] is if you look at this border visually nothing about it says hexagon it really says more diamond than it does hexagon and once again all we really would need is one line and that one line could be something we draw but it could also just be the seam on the edge of a border to make a really cool border awesome all right so last ruler for the day is the flower power template and the flower power template is a template that i use on a quilt that i'm finishing up for my ufo challenge um i joined a ufo challenge trying to get some of my unfinished projects done and so with the ufo challenge sorry guys just trying to find my ruler there we go all right so for my ufo challenge this was actually blocks that i found when i was cleaning up uh during the covid lockdown and these blocks i didn't actually do pam did these these were part of her paper piecing class that she taught and so i put them together and created a little table topper or wall hanging we had all the fabrics she had a little bit of fabric left over so you can see i got a little creative in the borders because i didn't have a full amount of fabric of anything just to kind of finish it up on there so i needed something to quilt into the middle of these squares and i kind of want to i mean i could have done something geometric but i kind of wanted something to offset the geometricness of the block so i wanted something a little bit softer so i thought that this was perfect so you can see how the template just fit in there and so we're just going to sew around and i'll show you how to do that uh once i got that done i then thought well you know i felt like i needed a little bit more so you'll see i have my chalk lines and from last video on ruler work we did circles and so all i did was four circles so i went here here here and came back and it creates this really cool little orange peel flower in the center we'll see if we can show it over on the other side that might be a little bit easier for you to see on there so we filled in that so this template here super super simple to work with literally you're just going to go around the template so we're going to pop this on it does have a ton of marks and a grid and so i did use the grid to kind of help keep me in the the same position i use the little hole at the top which i think you're supposed to be able to hang these with i use that as the top of my flower so i always have the same bumps in the same location so we're gonna come in we're gonna put the flower down where we want it to be put our presser foot down do your pull get that bobbin thread up there do a little tack stitch and clip that thread get that thread out of the way and then we're just going to line that up right along the edge you can really start anywhere you want on this flower it doesn't really make any difference you're going to go all the way around anyway so when you're going along you're going to work your way along now interestingly when you work on rulers that are so everything else that i did today were inside rulers we were trapped inside the ruler on the outside of the ruler the potential is there for you to kind of drift away from the ruler so one of the things that you want to be kind of aware of is you will need to pause somewhere along in the flower so like i'm here and my hand is kind of in the way so i'm going to take and bring my hand around and then i can go ahead and get started again so you may find yourself shifting your hands on your ruler just a little bit more the other thing that i find with rulers is this flower has a bump right so as i'm coming up the bump i never come off the ruler it's very controlled when i'm coming down the bump that's where i tend to if i'm going to come off the ruler i find i drift away on there i always uh do the analogy of a roller coaster as you go up the roller coaster it's like uh click click click click click all very controlled right you crest the top and you come down the other side it's like coming down the other side so you don't have to concentrate as you're going up but you do need to apply a little bit of pressure and concentration when you're coming down so we'll do just a quick little tack and boom we've got our flower and so you can see how easy that one is now just as kind of a little bonus you could use this flower to do an all over design so if we take i'm going to draw a quick line and remember these lines are going to be erasable guys so you're not going to have a line running through the middle of your quilt so what i'm going to do is you'll notice that on the flower power there is uh one side that's gridded and the other side that just has the angles on it so what i'm going to do is i'm going to turn the template so that i have the line on the gridded line and so i'm going to line that up i'm going to start over here at the side so you would normally tack and we're going to go all the way along up along the side here now coming back to the bottom of the line i then am going to take it and i'm going to flip the ruler over so my gridded part find your gridded part and you're going to line the gridded part over here so we're going to come along and so now i'm going to come down and i'm going to stitch down here so we'll go along i need to swap my hands because my hands are kind of in the way and back we come to the line again we would then flip our ruler line up the grid and then continue our way across so sometimes you have those quilts and you're like oh i just want to do an edge to edge kind of thing i don't want to have to do anything major how cool would this be to go across your quilt going along here and we could take it and we could draw a line say maybe every three inches and then we could line up and we would create let's uh let's do this i'll just jump up here and guesstimate i'm going to line up my the grid on the bottom of my ruler here and really all i'm paying too much attention to is because i'm a little anal about lining up i like the center here so you got that line that runs down the center i'm making sure that's lining up right in the middle of my um top bump there so that way they're going to echo and it almost looks a little bit like a cloud so having a plow go all the way around so can you see how the echo would work coming down through there so i hope you enjoyed these four shapes uh and i hope they inspired you to try some rulers and try maybe something a little different next time we're going to switch topics and we're going to show you how to make a new pin cushion so we're going to show you a couple of different ways of doing pink cushions so we'll see you next week doing pincushions thanks

Channel: HayesSewingMachineCo

Views: 1,634

Keywords: rulerwork, quilting, free motion rulers, longarm rulers

Id: VwHZp0KHEm4

Length: 37min 27sec (2247 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021