Kate Quinn explores the Fun and Fancy Templates using the Westalee Crosshair Tools.

hi everybody it's kate quinn it's sunday and it's time for our facebook live so if you're out there can do me a favor just give me a thumbs up if you can hear me just fine and let me know if your picture is good and i'll just make a quick adjustment because when i put this on here it just does its own little thing and i'll get it all secured for you all right hi anne hi die warner hi susan so let me go ahead and give just a moment for a couple of people to get on and my production manager is helping me again as usual so he's here today as well and he says hello hello so okay sounds looking good okay and i think our camera you know has a good view as well we're using that black fabric and i had a lot of people who were really happy with this rainbow thread so i decided i was going to go ahead and use the rainbow thread again because it shows up so well so today what we are focusing on is we're going to be showing you some unique ways to use the crosshair square and i have a bunch of them i'm just going to stick them up here real quickly they're really a bunch of them so right there just the regular eight point crosshair square and this is the small one here let me lift this up so you can get a good view so this one is eight and a half inches and these little frame right here that's your added quarter and you can see it's got two three four five six seven these are really useful if you're marking a specific size block you can align these reference lines on it and that will help you center the middle dot there which is where the design would be centered so let me just show you some of the other ones real quick so the next one is the six point and that basically has like 30 and 60 degree angles on it depending on how you use it so you can see that that has a lot different markings on it as far as the the slides it's not going to go to a corner like that 45 degree angle would so the eight point is perfect if you want 90 or 45 degree angle markings this is going to be 60 or 30 degrees depending on how big of an opening that you're using it does still have the same markings here and you can see that there's your eight and then you have the quarter all the way around okay so the next one i have is pretty big let's see if we can fit it under there i need that one baby can you hold that one thank you hi cedar falls iowa paul bailey and pat kozlowski from maryland i hope i said your name right okay so let's look at this one so you can see that this is kind of like a star almost in terms of how it looks this is the five point crosshair square and you can see this is the 12 and a half and it's huge i love it so let's start there people ask me all the time well which one should i buy i believe that you should buy whatever fits your needs but within that the big one is much easier to mark a larger area and not have to extend the lines so if you typically do larger blocks i highly recommend getting the largest one that you can afford and then if you have if you travel a lot if you go to your friend's house if you're taking your crosshair square with you the smaller eight and a half inch ones are so much easier to protect so if you're sticking it in your bag then i recommend maybe getting the smaller one and i'll tell the honest truth you could you saw you know i'm not lying i have both because they are different and if i can get away with the smaller one it's a little bit more convenient it's a little bit more portable but a lot of times if i'm doing something large i really need the larger one so those are available on so steady or from any of our so steady retailers and leone west has an amazing book which is called you know getting to know the crosshair square it has a lot of options for how you can use the different crosshair squares and create amazing designs with them so if you wanted to find that out you can just go to the website so study.com and you can type in leone west crosshair and book and that book will come up for you so that's pretty easy to find so beyond the fact that we are using our crosshairs we are using the fun and fancy collection so pat in that box right there on the floor is a fun and fancy collection can you just grab one so we can uh show people so here's a couple of the templates right here this is the inside of the oval we're going to be using that this is the circles on quilts number 21 and let me grab one more so and right here is the oval so these are the pieces of the collection just so everybody can look at them really quick and i'll show um our packaging really quickly so this is what you'd be looking for you know in order to purchase that so this is the path to ruler with quilting which is my book and then the template collection packaging is going to look like that let's see if we can get out a little bit so you can see better so right there that's what you're looking for so these are the five piece set it's um westily rulers so i want to make sure i always give credit to our amazing designer leone west i don't want anybody thinking that the templates are my design but i did use them in order to write the book because i think that these are just some of my favorites and they're amazing so let's go ahead and get started with the sewing part right that's my favorite part so i have a little sample of what we're going to be making it's not highly visible but it was kind of my practice piece but we're going to be doing it on the black so you'll be able to see a lot better so let's see if we can get you out a little bit more so can you see that let me tip it up just a little bit we're going to be making that and we're going to be talking about how you can make your own and have just a lot of options for how you can play with any template not just the ones in this collection but pretty much anyone and how you can use the crosshair squares to do that all right so i've already marked mine so i'm going to flip this over i just needed that plain background so we weren't getting too busy once we were looking at those crosshairs all right and i know somebody's going to ask me this because i always get asked this do i have to mark this stitching area no no i don't hi miss betty i'm glad you're you're gonna get yours tomorrow that's exciting um this right here is the circles on quilt spinning wheel number 21. so let me grab it and we'll start with that one oh it's hiding okay and you guys know me already i've been i'm showing you ways to use it not only with the pin obviously the pin is great and it works really well but today we're going to focus on the crosshair and so we're going to show you a unique innovative way that you can use it so the reason that this is drawn on here with my stitching line discs so let me grab those i used these awesome little circles and i use the one that fits my marking tool so the marking tool that i'm going to use today is the font and porter this is ceramic chalk white pencil with a little eraser here so this is what i'm using okay and i use the one that fits best so let me just open these up really quick so you can see that they're different sizes so you can see how big that hole is right there see if we can get you up top just a little bit more so you can get a little top down view there see that's just a little bit better i think see how those holes are all different sizes right in there well what's really important with those different sizes is if you're using different size marking tools you want to find the one that is going to fit best so this is pretty thin if i put it in this big one see how it just wiggles around and it doesn't actually follow the pen the marking tool but maybe this one is so tiny that if i stick it in there it probably won't even write because it won't go down far enough so maybe this one is perfect so i'll just like draw a little line on here you can see see how it will work so this is probably the best size because this will fit in there and the and the marking tool will come with me pretty reasonably so these are a really inexpensive little tool but they are gold as far as i'm concerned because i always want to play with my designs and i want to see how they can work before i put them onto my quilt and that's what i've done here so right here this mark is one and five eighths and i don't want you to remember that i want you to figure it out for yourself and i'm going to show you how so it's not about the number i decided that i liked this to come this far away from my center and when i look at it i know that i can make this fit onto these lines right here so that i can make it stitch back so if i line it up right there my foot will fit and it will touch the crosshair line right there so i can stitch over to this crosshair line by doing that right so let's go ahead and we'll get started with that right now and the little tick mark right there is my visual mark to line up the bottom of the template okay so i just measured what could fit using my little stitching line discs and i want to make sure that my my needle will be actually in my crosshair line right so then i can pick up my bobbin thread and we can go from there oh dark on it i always have this trouble i got to make sure not to use your your cutting button otherwise you always have to pick up that thread with this machine it's just so tight it won't do it all right let's get lined up because the ruler is going to tell us where the foot needs to go all right right there we go okay so we'll get that bobbin thread up and i like to stick it underneath there so we'll get it out of our way so i'll set my needle my foot into position first and then i'll snug the ruler right up to it since we know that it fits already all right so i'm lined up here and i'm lined up here and i'm looking right here i should be able to come right in to the crosshair line at the top here just take an extra stitch and then come down and i'll go ahead and i'll tell you why we do that the extra stitch its purpose is to tack the bobbin thread right there sort of like a locking stitch and that will prevent the bobbin from dragging so that you get that the thread on the bottom dragged into the next stitch so now we're at the crosshair line and we can snug the ruler right up and we're going to line up right here and right here and you can see we've got the perfect quarter inch so i'm going to answer jay's question the weight of my thread is a 40 weight three ply polyester it's called fantastico and uh the color is 50 32 rainbow thread this is a been a very popular whenever i use this thread a lot of people really like it so i wanted to make sure that i kept that information handy today so i'm right in my crosshair right there keep you guys um in the view field i'll just scoot this over i'm lining it up right there now i want to talk really quickly about i'm pretty much at the base of my ruler right here of this template i'm at a and b on this bottom line and that was a choice i could start way up here i could scoot this template down and only have this much and come into the crosshair line i just happened to select this position so that i would be able to get a larger bit of the design but it isn't required you can get however much you want based on your own choice and your own alignment okay so we'll keep going i'm talking a lot i know so always checking right here i can see that i've got just enough of that cross hair um showing that i should be able to get the foot right back to it so i'm right in my crosshair line right there get myself lined up here and checking right here that i have enough space i can see that i've got just the perfect amount of space there okay and let me show you one more thing i'm going to pull this off i want to make sure that you're seeing all of the things i'm trying to explain so let's pull this off real fast so notice that we're skipping a line right this is the center position of the template so we're crossing over so this line is the middle and and we're surrounding it so this is the pivot and then a skip on each one that's why i ended up making twice as many cross hair lines it's only going to be eight lobes but it's going to have 16 reference lines in order to put all of those in okay so we're snugged up we've got enough space right there and we're ready so i think i saw somebody was just asking when are they going to be available in the uk so i can't answer that um i recommend that you contact your local shop and you ask them if they have already ordered them and if they haven't then ask them to order that for you and then you can make sure that they can give you a good time estimate for international shipping it is much better for you to try to go through your local dealer if you can i did try to help some people but the cost and the tax and the duties can really add up so it's much better for you if you try to get it from your local person so i need that cord i need to get plugged in all right so we're down to the last one right here and i just want to show you if for example this space right here was bigger than a quarter inch which i don't think mine is i think it's fine i would hedge my bet with the position here and make sure that it's going to sew right back to where it needs to whether it was lined up here or not because remember that the line is going to go away so we don't have to worry about the line so much we really just want to make sure our design closes prettily so we'll just come in here alrighty let's see if we can take this off i don't want to cut my thread because we're going to do another one something else to show to show you real quick so let me show you on this one this has a really big piece right here and i recommend that we maybe sometimes put two pieces of tape i kind of put mine at a slant but a lot of times when i use this this can flex back here so i recommend either a wider piece of tape or maybe two and i like to fold the tape right there you can see right on the end i just fold the end and that makes a convenient little pull tab so if i need to take that off then i can easily do that how does the foot not hit the template hmm so there's a question from mary ann marianne can you add a little more information because typically the foot doesn't hit the template it rides against it so if this is the template right here the foot is traveling against the edge like that right so it's not going to come down on top of it it's actually next to it so that's why it's not going to hit like that so hopefully that answers your question if it doesn't let me know and i will try to see what i can do to give you a better answer okay so let's go on to our next one so let's see i'm going to flip it just so i can show you how i'm managing so right now there's a straight line right here and of course there's a straight line right through the center of this template and i want to put this on that center line as much as possible so i might have to kind of adjust him a little bit and i want him to hit right there so once again we can use our amazing fantastic spacing gauge and i want the edge flat against the template not like this let's turn that so you can see this this flat edge right here needs to try to go flat against the template not canted like that so this is going to help me make a cute little embellishment here okay and then i can put this next one and you know i'll i can eyeball it but you know if you want that accuracy you can go ahead and stick him in there and the reason i'm lining up the center line i mean i could just stick it on there any old way but we want the point of the oval the the tallest part of this arc to be centered in between this petal so that's how come i'm using the center line so if you know that wasn't important to you you can do whatever you want all right so we'll keep going so has anybody tried this before so if you've tried this go ahead and send a note to my production manager and i'll i'll put your name out there all right so can you see how we're going doesn't that look cool all right let's just do these last couple i'll try to do it faster i'm talking too much you can tell that i can't talk and sew at the same time all righty always trying to keep you guys in view so i'll go ahead and reorient it so get your center line get yourself tucked right up against the foot and then you can adjust your spacing right there and you know we know that fabric moves around so it can be off just a little bit this one's a little bigger so i'm just going to fudge it make it fit okay all righty oh going crazy all right so here's our last one we'll get him lined up and then i got one more little oval fun thing i'm going to show you okay so i'm going to go ahead and also demonstrate really quickly how we can tie off because i saw some people were asking questions so i i can vary my threads i have a self-threading needle and i do that sometimes i always bring the bobbin up to the top just like i showed you so if i'm done stitching another easier faster way to tie off is with micro stitching so i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to take a few stitches about five or six especially with the polyester thread that's kind of slick now bring up your needle and release the pressure on your presser foot you've got to do that so you can move and the thread will come with you hold on to this thread i'm going to put my needle right back down right where i left off so that it's right in the same thread path and then i can pick up that bobbin thread really easy like that so you can see now we have the bobbin thread right here it has two sides this side right here is loose you can see that's the bobbin this side right here is connected to the quilt so because we're already tied off i can just cut it right at the sandwich because we've already tacked it in so we can literally actually cut all of these off and you could see it's you know it's right on that little juncture but it's not too bulky or anything like that it still looks great and let's see if we can show you the other view so always it looks really busy of course on the chalky side but there's the back right and we can we can echo this we can put veining in here we can do other things and it'll look great and this is just a fun little design that you can do so let me show you one more thing we're going to put something right in here really quickly and i'll just show you how to do that all right let me grab my template back where'd it go this one is the one i need right here okay so you know you can see this could be good by itself and we can put something in here and i do have a design that i'll show you how to do in just a moment but we'll do this outer one first if i wanted to put another piece in here i can use some kind of reference like i can use this point right here and then that'll be the base and that'll determine how tall that this is and that'll help you make sure that each one is the same or you can measure from the center and you can decide like if you wanted it to go further out the key is that you can't have it so far out that you don't connect to the existing design it can only go far enough that you can sew back in so right here when the foot touches it's going to come in so i'll just use this pin hole right there and i'm going to make it line up with each of these marks right here and that'll be my reference point so i'll get the template in place first and i'll get him lined up up at the top up here and here so he's on this line and i want to not touch the existing design but i want to be one quarter inch away so the foot is touching that stitching line right there okay all right so i'm going to set my foot right in place on the stitch line get my needle down and i'll think i'll hold for that first few stitches right so we're we're quarter inch away so we'll sew this part and we're going to come down until the foot touches right there okay and then wherever i want to i can make it bigger or smaller but i want to make sure that i have the same spacing on this side so right here i need a half inch because the foot right there is a half inch so let's get my spacing gauge so essentially right across from this so i'll pull this down a little bit like that so that gets me on the center line and that'll get me into this foot so this is going to be a very narrow echo right here it kind of peaks up here at the top and then we'll come back down so he's touching right there and now we can get lined up with the next one right here and that'll let us come back in so we're using our same position right there with the pin and we're lining up right gauge come with there templates as i said uh so this spacing gauge it it does not come with the templates but certainly you can order it with the templates and then this strap right here is called the notions necklace and i love it so it's not a bungee but it's a quick release and i can't tell you how many times that i have lost this guy when he's by himself just like that because you set him down he disappears so having a nice little colorful tag on there and a strap has been great to make sure that i don't lose him and i actually have several different colors it comes in 10 different colors and it's it's very cost effective the spacing gauge itself is only eight dollars for the msrp very much worth it you definitely want it i use it so often so i won't do much more on this outside because i kind of showed you the idea so i'll take it off just so you can see how we went but does that look cool i love it i think it looks awesome so this is how you could make the design bigger and bigger and bigger which is so great in case you have a really large area or you just want a fun big center motif so i'm going to go ahead i'll tie it off right here because i'll come back and i'll finish this later on so we'll review really quick needle up first press your foot up pull the sandwich towards you about six inches to lengthen this bobbin here and then line it back up and bring your needle down in the stitch line and up and then when you pull it don't pull this pull both sides and that's how you can pick up that bobbin thread since we're tied off i'll just cut it which is great because now we have a nice long bobbin on the bottom and we'll be able to pick him up easy okay so let's move on so we're going to try a new template this time let me cut these threads we don't want these guys in our way either so we'll cut them okay so the next template that we're going to play with is this one now these lines right here this is 90 degrees if i go from this line to this line to this line to this line this line is in the middle which makes this a 45 degree angle so how did you let's see mary let me try to answer your questions how did you what can you read what mary stone says uh what did you use to mark your lines and how was it removed okay miss mary you you are late i did say that at the beginning this is the fonz importer ceramic chalk pencil right and and it comes off pretty easy and then i also have a little dry toothbrush a clean dry toothbrush and if the chalk you know has trouble coming off i just you can use that or you can use a gum eraser works really good to get it off like a white gummy eraser like this i use this too works awesome that's also my high tech pin management system pretty awesome huh super super pricey no just kidding okay let's get back to this oval so we just talked about how these lines on here are each at 45 degrees so let me show you if i want to put this little asteroid in here i'm going to line up the template first on the 90 degrees so he'll be right in the middle so he's lined up here and here and then this way he's lined up on those lines line him up first and then figure out where you're going to put your foot you know once he's in place and i want you to line up on one of these lines right here the 45 degrees so you're going to start sewing with your needle lined up at that 45 degree okay so once again we'll get that bobbin thread up and we'll get our foot right in place and i really want to check and make sure that i'm on these chalk marks really well because you'll see in a minute that's going to be kind of important all right so needle down all right so let's sew this one such a pretty shape i love this oval it's gorgeous so the relationship on the oval it's three inches tall and it's one and a half inches wide so i'm just gonna hold these make sure i can tack and close that oval so i put a few stitches right there at this 45 degree angle i can rotate this now and i can line him up exactly this other direction and i can sew the next oval i call this the little asteroid because it reminds me of george jetson so we'll tack it right there so we need a couple stitches and then needle up and we'll kind of get this out of here too we'll scoot him over so get myself lined right back up where i left off and i'll bring up that bobbin thread all right and we can cut everybody since we're all tacked in so we don't need any of these threads we can just chop them off all right so doesn't that look cool i love it and that was a way that you could make this design continuous so that's what the information about the 45 degree relationship is if you want to add more you can use those same relationships and you can you know come over here and maybe put it this way if you wanted to have more of these so this is a really great way to put a fun bit of design in there and then you could even put maybe a circle in there and do some micro stitching in there to create a lot of lift and because now we have this scallop we could make all of this punch down which will make this center part really lift up and give a lot of extra texture to the design okay so gary asked would you do mostly quilting as you go with the template so gary i don't i do everything i do quilt as you go i do demonstration pieces i do full-size quilts i think that that to answer that more specifically a lot of it depends on how large your throat of your machine is so let me show you mine really fast so this is my throat this is huge okay i got a lot of room if you have a long arm you're gonna have a lot of room if you have you know a small machine that has maybe a five or six inch throat maybe quilt as you go is more fun and easier quilting should be fun and i think sometimes when we have a really big quilt that's really heavy it doesn't matter if you have templates or not it's still hard templates aren't going to fix a small throat or a heavy quilt they're not going to make it lighter and they're not going to make it easier but they make the lines prettier they make you able to make the lines clean and precise and even and things like that and so that's what they do for you ah so let's see i see another question let me add that why do some of the crosshair rulers have the small black border and some do not okay so betty is asking let me show you um the blackboard maker perfect okay look so this cross here is like the first crosshair i bought ever i've had it maybe six years a long time and this was this frame was a stiffener that they actually put on it to help make it more rigid so that it wouldn't be as broke broken as easily and it's great i mean i don't mind it i just use the edge and i know that that's a quarter inch but it has some visibility issues but it works perfectly fine the key is if you're using one like this you want to make sure that the lip right here is face up okay because if you don't then your pen or your marking tool has to go through the lip and the slot right so you never want to use it like this okay this one is the newer version it's thicker the actual space right there is thicker and i like that it's clear all the way to the edge because then there's no obstruction of your view it doesn't matter you know one or the other this is what you'll see a lot of times but both of them work great they're totally fantastic it's just that they have just a different look and i think some of the ones that we've made for vendors like for janome or for baby lock or for different you know companies those don't have the lip they kind of look like this but they all work great they just work fine all right so let's move on so this one that we just did this is the eight point crosshair with 16 reference lines okay so i've got some little smaller spaces and i've got some more ideas that i wanted to share so let me grab the tools that we'll need um so i marked them down here just to make sure i could remember so we'll start right here with this two inch circle and that's just a regular circle so this is not not not listen to me not in the fun and fancy collection this is from the sampler set right which is our beginning six piece sampler set that we've had for a really long time i wanted to integrate some of the sampler set pieces because i know a lot of people have those so this could be a fun way to use my tools that i've set up in the fun and fancy collection and then also integrate with tools that you already have all right so right here you're just gonna go ahead and make your circle and we'll pick up the bobbin thread and then scoot that right up next to the template all right so here we go and i want to stop on one of these crosshair markings right there make sure that you stop on the markings so here let's get you in maybe a little closer oh i don't know what happened hi let me flip it i touched the wrong button i was trying to make it a little bit better view for you guys okay so that's just the circle so we'll just take him off we don't want to cut our threads or anything so we'll just take him off and so this is the inner part of the oval so let me show you that so they used to just give you this and now they're giving you this part too love it love it it's like two in one they're different sizes because one is inside a quarter inch on the outer edge and then this one is a quarter inch on the inside so they do make different sizes so i want to show you what we'll do here so we can oh let's see we got to use the other one sorry i think i'm using the wrong one this was set up for the outside okay here we go let's put this on did i flip it around there we go goes this way make sure that your tape is really secure and then when you're doing that if you've taken the tape off run your finger right here and make sure that this piece is seated cleanly because sometimes he can jut just a little bit out if the tape isn't seated just right you know so just like lift that up make sure that you've got this nice clean edge right here because the the foot is going to go past that and if it's not nice and clean it might go bump bump as it goes along so all right so we're going to line up the center line that's what we're going to use right here to get us lined up and we're going to pull this down so that the top of this is at my little tick mark right there and i think that's two and a half from the center you can make it whatever you want it's up to you right so we've finished the circle and now we want to come up to this crosshair so let's go ahead and just hop up so that we're on the crosshair line and this this is like our little jump stitch right so we don't have to reset anything so stop right in your crosshair line line up and you you should be able to touch the foot and have yourself lined up at the same tick mark be traveling cross hairline to cross hairline little adjustments are fine it won't matter nobody will see that but in general you should be able to fit so when we get to this crosshair line and we line up right on that tick mark we should be able to get lined up pretty easily right on all of the lines so there's our little tick mark right at the top and we're going to stitch over to the next cross hair line all right so let's get lined up and the the reason that i chose the particular size here that i did is this will fit right inside of this space so it's kind of maximizing the space as much as possible but you can make it shorter you can even make it taller if you want to if you had more space you could make this oval come out so the width right here the widest part of this oval is one and a half so the space that it can bridge and and go cross hairline to cross hairline is one and a half inches because that's the widest that this is this direction if you wanted to go this way you can go up to three but this is going to be much shallower okay so i i like it you know with that depth so we'll line it up right on the tick mark right there right on that center line back there and we'll go cross hair to cross hair alright i like this one because he kind of looks like a really fun flower so remember here that we want to make sure that we get back to our quarter inch space so this would be a good place to use your spacing gauge so we'll get him lined up first and then we'll check the space so it looks like i need to come in just slightly so that he'll hit right where i want him to okay so let's pull this off so you can see what we got so and let's go ahead we'll tack him and cut him as well so he can get off of there it's just scotch tape just regular regular scotch tape nothing fancy i would recommend you know don't use an expensive tape as long as the tape will come off easily and not leave a residue that's really the biggest thing so where did i put my scissors i got it thanks baby all right so we've secured this because we stitched over it so we can cut those because they're already tacked off and when we started here we tacked that so that's just a jump stitch that we can just cut and then there'll be a little thread on the back but we'll be able to just trim that off so isn't that fun that looks so awesome and and having those little tick marks is important because that helps keep the lobes the same size so you know sometimes if you're going just cross hair to crosshair but you don't have a tick mark or you don't have an alignment mark what you can end up with is maybe one of the lobes will be a little bigger than the other ones and sometimes that doesn't matter but you know so gary um is there anything that keeps the template from slipping yes oh my goodness let's talk about that so here's my best tip on that for you guys i'll put these up here this is stable tape these are pre-cut these are a little small i like them about a half inch but these were like the ends of of a piece that i had the last little bits of the piece so let me grab one of my templates real quick so our templates you can see that this is the back right here because you see how the words are upside down so this is the front right these lines here are etched in on the back of the template so if i use them this way i don't know if we'll be able to get you in to see let's see if we can use a simpler template that might show better okay so if i have the lines on the top this these are the lines this is upside down the grips are on the top as well if i use that where the lines are on the top and the light is shining down on the template you're going to get a slight shadow for every one of these lines which makes it sometimes very difficult to line up if you're trying to use the lines to line up right so i like to put the grips on this back side and it's really important to have the grips where you're going to hold so a lot of times i hold this template like this um the grips on this were on for quite a long time but i think i'd actually put them closer to the edge i actually like to hold this one like that with one finger this little guy is called the speed bump detector right so if the template moves this guy's on the fabric these guys may not feel it because the ruler is not moving their fingers are not moving against the ruler but this guy back here he's feeling if the fabric is shifting around right so what i like to do is i'm going to put the grips right where i want to use them i would put them right under my fingertips like that you know so when you get your rulers when the the first time when you open the package and you're playing with them i want you to get a scrap of fabric and i want you to play with them before you put your grips on decide what feels comfortable what feels sturdy what is not hard on your hands what's a good position and then i want you to put the grips right underneath where your pressure points are because i have this ruler right and if i just stick it on here and i hold it down here look nothing it doesn't do anything but if i hold it right there it's going to hold much much better if you're actually compressing on it so you can't just be like oh i'm holding and it's still moving that doesn't work hold it where the grips are okay all right so hopefully that answered that question and let's see where we are so we we've got these cute little flowers so let's do one more so this time we're going to use our our back-to-back template and let me show you how we're going to use it so i've got two different sets of lines here and this one is i don't remember how what the measurements are but it doesn't matter you just decide for yourself and then i'll show you how i just chose it this is the center and i just said okay i'm gonna line this one up right there like that that's totally random i could line it up here i could line it up here i'm gonna travel from crosshair line to crosshair line this one allows me to have a deeper curvature if i'm down here i only get this much so you can decide what you want to do it's totally up to you okay so let's go ahead and we'll get lined up and the key here is like if this is the edge right here it's going to sew a quarter inch beyond that so it's not going to be outside of the block it's just going to be a little bit above that so you know i wouldn't make it so that you set the template right there because then you're outside of your boundary all right so let's get set up i'm lining up this center line and i'm going to put the tick mark that is furthest away and then i'll start on the crosshair line over here because i'm sewing across the crosshair line like that so i've got to start actually in a crosshair line in order to start the design all right so and if you guys have any questions as we go keep relaying those because my super helper is right here now here i want to hold up here not back here if i hold back here look at what's going to happen to the template can i know if you can see that but i can like stick my finger under there always pressing down where the foot is going to be positioned so don't be holding back here get your fingers up right in this area okay since we're centering him the foot should be able to touch right where the crosshair line is because we're sewing cross hairline to cross hairline he should be able to be aligned right on this center line here and then when we get to the next crosshair line he should be able to fit just perfect okay so right there stop on the crosshair line not in the hook but on the crosshair line right there do i have grip tape on both sides of the ruler the answer is yes and the reason for that with this template is this template is designed to be able to be flipped so it can easily be used on both sides so i definitely put grips on both sides of this one because sometimes just depending on what the design is it might be easier to use it on one side or the other and that's very common with the back to back templates so you would definitely want to do that so here's my center line right there my tick mark make sure that the ruler is touching the foot when you begin so make sure that that's that's clean even if he's not in the hook make sure the ruler is touching that's what's important okay and we can just keep going get him lined up and make sure he's touching there we go this one looks like he's a little wonky maybe i marked him poorly that's okay we're gonna fudge it fudging is good remember that the lines don't go home with you they come out so as long as the design connects you're good to go now we're at the very last part right here notice that that maybe looks a little bigger than a quarter inch so what are we going to do we're going to fudge just like we said it's more important that the design closes than it is well i guess that's pretty good actually he fits perfect all right all right so let me show you got kind of like a little flower shape and one of the things that's great about this template is i could hop over and i could make successive lines with this like i could just move over one foot or whatever i wanted let's tack it real quick and i'll show you what i mean okay so same thing we'll do our little jump stitch technique we can just move this and we can move it wherever we want we can even move it to this other position right here and then we can start a whole new grouping and just center this right here and then that'll give us this little echo right here all right do the grips help move the fabric yes they absolutely do the grips not only prevent the ruler from moving but one of their most important features is that they make the fabric move it's like having those gloves on this grip is like a glove it's making the fabric move with the ruler and keeping them together so it gives you a little bit of extra tack so that everybody will move together and then we can just keep going so here you can see this is that half inch right there i think one of mine was off but but i'm okay with it let's get this i'm gonna cut that real quick so he's not in our way that was our jump stitch so sheila this is the fun and fancy collection so the ruler i'm using right now is called the back to back 3-2 so let me show you the three is that this shape from this center line right here this is the split transition so there's a c on this side and when you get over to this side it starts going this way this is the bottom of the c so this is three inches for the top curve and then three inches for the bottom so the total distance of this template right here is six inches on both sides so each of these spaces this is one and a half from this line to this line and one and a half and then this is the middle of the curve right there and then it's deeper on one side and shallower on the other side so this one has a two inch from the top of the curve to the bottom here it's two inch differential and on this side from the top to the bot to the bottom of the curve is one and a half so there's two different sides different depths that are part of this template so there you can see my little echo and you could just keep filling those in or you could do some something else in the center this one is the five point crosshair and you can see that there's not as many lines as there were for some of the other ones that we did oh excuse me let me take a drink i'm gonna answer a question while i take a drink so put your question in okay so the fun and fancy collection it's a five piece template set and it has my very first book it's called the path to roller work design and it has over a hundred different designs there's 32 base designs in the fun and fancy book and then there's variations of the design on every page and i know there's more than 100 overall in addition there is a about almost 13 hours of video education that is available on the so steady university i've also made the fun and fancy sampler quilt which i have posted the links for both of those items up in the post today so if you want more information about the fun and fancy collection you can click on either of those links and watch the launch videos as well as get product information about them so let's go ahead and i'm going to tack this off so these are what i would call motif style designs both of these all of these but the point of today's lesson is to show that you don't have to use the template in what i would consider to be this very regimented restrictive way you are the designer you are creative i know that you are or you wouldn't be here and you can use any part of a template a little piece a full piece you can use this side you can use this little piece right here and then you can create whatever you want in order to make the design your own so let's go ahead i'm going to show you this spacing that i've created right here so these little boxes are three inches and they're designed right now to be used with this template and i think we need to kind of give you a wider view so let's see if we can just pull you back a little so you can get a little bit more of the view so trish are you asking about my batting so if you if you are can you put a note in there well here i'll just tell you what my batting is this batting right here this is wool blend i think it's pellon made by pellon it's a hundred percent wool blend what does that mean it means it's like all kinds of different scrap wools that are needed knitted together you know needled together so it's not necessarily you know merino wool or whatever it's mixed right and then this is the cotton and that's just a warm you know thin cotton a really thin cotton i'm using two layers because i like the puff and i also like with a variegated thread that if you use two layers it's a lot easier to hide the stitch knot on the back right so that you don't have extra color coming through because now there's two layers of batting that knot has a lot of room to hide so that makes for a much better stitched look if you're doing variegated threads um how do you pick what color thread you use on multiple colors oh linda so thank you i i knew you were gonna i i remember we talked about that okay so let me show you how i pick let me grab um can you grab like any scrappy fabric over there that's got um like different colors on it i think there's these yeah okay perfect that'll work there we go okay so let's use this really quickly um so mariah millard i'm gonna tell you you said that it looks easy but your thread keeps breaking so on fabricated quilts i have a troubleshooting video and i go through a lot of different things that can cause your thread to break so that's not really a simple answer that i can just get wave my wand and magically fix your your situation you have to try a few different things so if you would like that i will look for your name and i will post that or you can go to fabricated quilts and just type a message that says hey where's your troubleshooting video and then anybody that wants that information i'll tag them so that they can find it easily okay so i got a bunch of different threads here i'll just like whoa there's a million different colors lots of them linda martingale martindale what i do is i take some thread like a little i call the little messy nest right there and for this particular square this looks fine because i will tell you that this particular piece has a million seams i don't want some thread that's going to show so this pink kind of floats into the background it's it's it's a nice color on the purple it's fine on the yellow there's enough color on the dark ones that it'll be fine it kind of reads purple too this thread would be perfect for stitching this out so bundle up your thread especially if you have um any kind of variegated thread or if you have a quilt that say it has 10 different colors so like here's an example i'll put another one up here barb thanks for coming i'm glad you'll catch up later have a great day all right so let's put this one on so if i wanted you know to put some threads on here if i put some red here i pretty much know that that red thread is going to just take over red has a way of just taking over everything it so when i'm using red i would want to make sure that i know that that's what i want to see i want to see that red thread here i want that piecing to show because the piecing is pretty unique and fun so the the thread here this light blue it shows the quilting but it doesn't overwhelm the piecing so again i would take some of that thread and i would i kind of put it like this especially if you have different colors take your little spooling group like this you can even just cut a piece off and then pick up your little nest like this and put it on each color and say can i live with that on the white can i live with that on the navy can i live with it on that and if there is a specific color that you don't like you can either choose a different thread that will work on everything or you can say okay when i get to the red maybe i'll change thread colors for that area and then that way you can preview will those colors work for you so that's what i do i usually take you know a good little bit and i'll probably have four or five different ones and then i put them out onto the quilt and if you have scraps you can even make your own little test basin you know with your batting that you're going to use put some strips of every color of fabric and then actually go ahead and quilt on those with the color of your chosen thread and see if they all work and that's a pretty easy way otherwise you can just use a really neutral thread like yellow tends to blend a really pale yellow blends really well with anything that's kind of warm and then you know a light blue tends to go really well with anything that's cool so those are easy way so um is all my thread 50 weight okay let's answer that this right here is 12 weight only suitable for the bobbin this thread is 30 weight rayon love it it's awesome but rayon is a little bit weak so i use that for design emphasis but if i want the quilt to be like holding together or if i'm stitching a baby quilt or something like that i'm not going to use rayon it's not as durable polyester is your most durable thread this thread right here hard to break it super durable super easy care the dye lot doesn't fade this is isocord and there's floriani or magnifico are all very similar they're 40 weight 3 ply trilobal polyester this is bomb if you guys are having trouble with thread breakage here's my number one tip for you try a thread like this 40 weight 3 ply polyester with a 90 needle a 90 top stitch needle or quilting needle you're going to have more success because this thread it's like training wheels for for starting you know it just is very trouble free and it's very lint free so i recommend that um here's another thread that i like okay i love to do micro quilting with hundred weight silk or with invisifil 100 weight right here these two threads they kind of just sink in they really allow you to have multiple layers of thread without getting all bulky and so you can do a lot of detail fine detail work with these and they really really shine in that area okay so it looks like we have a question so in the fun and fancy table topper class is there a separate video for the free motion design oh i'm in trouble you guys so here's what happened on that i'll even share the thread with you i ran out and i can prove it because this is the thread i didn't have enough to finish the video and i just got the replacement spool so i will be adding that and i will send an email out to all of the students on that class as soon as the free motion piece is added it should be added very soon so thank you for your patience how much pressure are you putting on the templates it's related to your next question i think is there a trick on how long you can use templates and not get back pain okay so let's answer that that is a really really important and powerful question okay so i teach a lot and i've traveled a lot and seen how a lot of people sew and here's the number one thing that i see when people get tired if this is my ruler and this is my hand like this see this in fact we'll kind of like we'll try to go out just a little bit more so you can have a little bit wider angle if you're pressing down really hard like this okay think about it this way you are having an anvil on top of your quilt right the ruler should not move but the quilt has to move so if i am pushing down so hard with my hand how can the quilt move around right so you cannot press down so hard in addition if i have this against my foot and i push this into my foot really really hard i have seen people so hard that they end up pushing their needle or their foot support bar over okay we can hear patrick so can you can you what what is she saying i can't see it is linda i'm not that far i was still way back oh okay well so anyway just to just to clarify pressure you need to have firm pressure but you should not be gripping for dear life either pushing down or pushing in that's why i think that having your little bumper finger out here can help you because that's going to help you detect if there's any movement so you should be able to move pretty freely and then if you have a larger quilt where the edges are hanging off sit in really really close so like if this is my body and this is the edge of my table right here okay so you're really close to it you're gonna scoot your body in as close as you can so that there's no gap between your sewing machine table and the uh your body and bolster the quilt up in front of you so like maybe put a pillow in your lap or something like that so that the quilt doesn't hang over the edge and that'll help alleviate some of the weight where it kind of gets stuck as you're pushing and then out here on the edges make sure that you're pulling the quilt all the way you know on top of your so steady table and maybe packaging it a little so that it can move more easily okay so they can't hear my questions you just got to repeat it but barbara asked does that ruler included with the kit i think she's talking about the back to back that you were just using so this is included with the fun and fancy set so let me okay can you grab that the package again that you had so i'm going to put the rulers up one more time so it's it's just sort of a collection of my favorite i'm just going to pull this package out because i think that will help you to see everything really really easily all right so here it is so you've got this is spin effects number eight so let me show it in real life this is spinifex number eight right there okay so he sews out at five and a half so this will fit very well into a six inch block then this is the back to back 3-2 and it has a six inch from side to side and let's see on here so this is kind of the design right here for this back to back right there so this is the main one we used today this is the circles on quilts spinning wheel number 21 and that's this shape right here that one i love it it's big it sews out at seven and a half so it will fit really easily into an eight inch block and then this is my between the lines one inch so that's just a circle but a very useful circle with a lot of great reference markings and you can see right here so if you have lines one of the benefits between the lines is you can sew the circles in a straight line with no marking but it can do many other things beyond that but that is just kind of what the markings are designed for and then of course we used our oval today a lot and the oval that's in our fun and fancy collection is the three inch by one and a half so it's tall and one and a half inch wide right across the middle and there's just many many different designs that you can do with that so in their work with fun and fancy which is my book and we'll just i'll just show you the cover but like i said there's product information that's available and then this fun and fancy topper this quilt piece right here the instructions for constructing it and for quilting it are free with the purchase of a bundle with the bundle it's on the society university and that's the class that somebody was asking am i going to show the free motion stuff and the answer is yes so let's go ahead and we'll move on we'll do one more design that i've got um set up for you guys so we've done some of the motifs and i just wanted to let you see maybe a different style so that's what these markings here are for so let's see if we can get you back out so you can see a little better oh so somebody was just commenting that uh from the demo yeah if your hands are tired you might be holding too tight and if your arm is up i usually come over to the students and i go like this oh just relax put that down because if you're up like that you know you're trying to generate that downward pressure but you should be able to have enough pressure this way one other thing that i will comment on that is if you're down like this like if you're below your machine so that your hands are like t-rex hands that is not sufficient because i can't put any downward pressure like that i need to be up above so that my hands are over my table pushing down so if you're down below your table then you need a booster or a different chair several people ask is that embroidery thread or sewing thread okay so somebody's asking is that sewing thread or embroidery thread and i'm going to tell you if i'm sewing with it does that make it not sewing thread i will use whatever thread i want to use if it works for what i want to do so yes that's embroidery thread can i embroider with it yes can i embroider with cotton i can it might be more or less successful but all of those threads are sewing thread this isocord lots of people use it for embroidery because it's shiny and it's strong and it's pretty and i quilt with it all the time it's amazing on my long arm and it works great in any domestic sewing machine so you can call it whatever you want it doesn't say isochord embroidery thread it just says isocord so to me that's just thread i'm gonna sew with it and i'm gonna quilt with it and don't limit yourself don't you don't need a label to say i'm gonna use this or not if the thread is pretty and you like it then you should try it and if it works well try it some more buy a few more colors if it doesn't work well say okay forget it i hate that thread i'm not going to use it anymore okay so let's talk about the spacing on this design so we talked about how this is the three inches for the curve so i can use it on either side but remember we talked about the lines so here would be an example of i could use it this way right or i could use it this way now what i want size wise is i want the foot to sink right in because if this is three inches then i should be able to sew right from each of these markings because this is perfectly measured for these guys to fit so i've got this first reference line lined up i could move him up you know i could do whatever i needed to do to make him fit so we'll go ahead and we'll just make him fit if you ever need to adjust this template say i want the foot to end in a certain place you can adjust right at the top just scoot him over so that this center line and this edge line now are lined up for some reason that first one seemed like he was a little short so in order to make him fit i had to adjust him okay so there's the hook so then i'll just scoot over and now he's lined up so this line right here is lined right up with the marked line and i'm on this first etched line right there so he's gonna sew at exactly that three inch spacing right there all right so let's get lined up and so this one maybe he's a little big so i'm just gonna push him in a little so he'll fit right on that line why are these lines important i could just sew this without these reference lines but in just a minute you're going to see why the lines are important they're going to help us make sure that the lines on the other side of the design are going to fit together so that we have a very symmetrical look if i was just doing this on one side and it wasn't going to match up to anything then i wouldn't even care about having any reference lines because it wouldn't matter but since we're going to make the other side match then it does matter so this is a border style the border size is two and a half inches wide right here i could make it narrower i could make these overlap but we're not going to today that would just be a different design that we would choose if we were going to do that okay now the spacing on here was a little bit wider let me flip it so i can show you what i'm talking about so right here this was actually bigger than 18. so these this marked line right here i'm just going to sew over to this side so let me get a straight edge so we can do that okay so now we're going to do the same curves on this side and that's going to create a little space right in here that's kind of fun so same thing you're just using the one side and you're going to get this line lined up right here and that's important because we want the curves to come in with this hourglass right at the same spot so we're going to kind of massage this to make sure that this is lined up just right so i've done this before and sometimes if they're off then they just look really wonky so that's why all these marks can be really super helpful and really practical all right here we go so you can see that this would quilt up really fast this would be great for a three inch border so stitch one more stitch right there all right and then i'll smush this a little to make sure that i'm lined up all right and one more so measure carefully fabric moves around you can tell because this is finely lined up i had to push him to kind of put a little bit more fullness but it'll all quilt out so don't worry about that it'll all fit in there all right and this would be the last one and that'll get us right back to the end so i'm going to turn it around so you guys can see so i love that and if you're a free motioner then this would be a fun place to put some kind of like wavy hourglassy thing right in here to fill this in which will make these puff in addition one of the really cool features of this is you get two different sizes so the one that we did was this wide size well now we could take this and we could put this narrower size on there and we could do a double swag if you wanted to do that and that would all be continuous and that would be a really pretty look for a border so you can see just by doing that you can get this cute little swag so that'll double that up and kind of create a little bit more of a fancy detail into those spaces if you doubled it up like that so all right so that's a fill that you can use and that you know has like i said the fun opportunity to put either you know a little bit more fill in there and then this would basically be your seam right here so if you're going to do something like this i really recommend putting some reference marks in there to make sure then that you can have the look where the this little diamond part of this will match up and you can make this narrower if you made this space say maybe like one and a half or two or something like that you could make it where these cross over and you would get that little oval in the middle where these overlap and then these would become diamonds right here because they would be connected yeah so i'm going to answer francis barrett she commented that she has challenges with borders because it's often a print fabric or very difficult to mark and that's true and i will tell you that when i first you know was free motioning and things like that that i often would choose a printed fabric for the border and and sometimes still do but the better that i'm getting at quilting the more i want the quilting to show and the more likely i am to choose a solid on a border so that's an option as you get better let me show you a couple different marking options that might be helpful i do recommend having an array of colors so that you can can work with some different things to see what works for you so obviously the white worked really really well on this black and this purple are erased probably would not work at all on here you probably wouldn't be able to see anything maybe barely barely can't see it okay so you're going to try to have a little selection of things that will work well with you i love this chalk right here this is bohemian chalk pencil let me show you it's pretty fat if i don't need a really accurate line and i don't mind a little fine you know fat a little fat mark i love this chalk and it erases so easily so easily look at that so i really like this one but he's not as accurate as this one this one is going to give you a much finer point a much accurate more accurate look and this is the fonzan porter so boheme this is air erased this pen is made by collins let me show you i think i have one in the package well dritz makes one too so this is dritz it's very similar this one is collins but these are pretty commonly available for you this is um clover choco liner it is pink because it used to have pink powder in it and the pink i had trouble getting it off of something so i put pounce powder in there with a little funnel a little paper funnel and this is a dress maker wheel and this particular tool is really great when you're using the crosshair squares it makes a really accurate mark and because it's just fat enough that this can fit right in the slot this is very very accurate so i do like all of these i don't um use friction pens but you know whatever you should use what you want to use and i don't i don't usually use the blue markers either which i mean i don't have anything against them but i just i don't want to get things wet so to get them out so i don't usually use those okay so um let me check really quick and see if there's any questions okay linda linen feltzer what stitch length and any settings can help me so that the troubleshooting view video that i have that i will offer out the link for if you want to go to fabricated quilts and just you know type in some message to me hey i want the troubleshooting video then i will try to tag all the people that said that i'll go through all the feed after this and anybody that wants to see the troubleshooting video i'll tag them in that video so that they can see it or i'll try to put the links you know available for you if you're free motioning and your feed dogs are down your stitch length doesn't matter okay let's do this really quickly we'll just do this out here in the margin okay my stitch length right now let's see if it's set on anything oh it isn't because it is free motion we'll just sew okay right now i am controlling my stitch length completely if i go fast my stitches will be big that means that i am moving at a speed that doesn't allow enough stitches to happen so if your stitches look like that so let's get you in a little closer so you can see i'll get you a nice good view right see how big they are they're huge right so if they're like that if they look really really big then you have to speed up your machine i recommend that people don't change their body the way that they sew most people have sewn enough that they know how fast they want to go so you want to try to change the machine so make the machine go faster now if i go fast see how my stitch length changes and now it looks better and that's just just speed differential right you could still sew slowly but if you so slow this is what happens to a lot of people then the stitches get really really tight so you can change the speed control on your machine to adjust how your stitches look try making it go faster making it go slower and then if you do that the key thing is if you make any adjustments with speed you have to make sure that once you do that you must press the gas on your machine all the way otherwise you're not actually letting the machine control for speed so let's see thank you guys i like to see okay so heat erasable pens i don't use friction pens but you can if you want to fran it's up to you all right you guys so one minute if you have any extra any questions i'll let you put them up and i'm gonna say this real quick before we sign off if you could and you're interested in the fun and fancy sampler quilt which we released last week which is a quilt pattern then if you would like to like comment and share on this video then i will have my society help pick a winner to send that pattern out as a thank you for your participation and being here on a sunday so can you grab the blue book that's in there so we'll we'll share that real quick right so i'm just going to go through my list real quick and see if there's any other comments okay all right so this is the fun and fancy quilt sampler and let's see if we can go back out a little bit so you can see it better there it's sometimes it's really hard because we're too close when we're sewing alrighty so just to clarify this is a quilt pattern and it is using the west elite cutting system to cut it as we shared last week and i'll just like i'll show you one page ready so look at see nice clear direction step by step pretty and really really easy lots of great tips so there's also a video available for that online so if you are interested in that you can go to social study university and sign up for that class and you can get a digital copy of this um there as well if you didn't want the printed copy all right so things i'll be checking the feed afterwards so if you still have any comments or questions you can add them in i do check everything myself after we sign off and i hope you had a great day remember that you can use the templates you have at home and you can use the crosshair techniques that we did today and you can make your own designs so have a great time go and grab all your tools and grab your crosshair squares and play have a great weekend

Channel: Quilting with Kate Quinn of FabriKated Quilts

Views: 16,253

Rating: 4.9461884 out of 5

Keywords: Westalee, Kate Quinn, Sew Steady, Between the Lines Circle Templates, Westalee Design, Quilting with Templates, Domestic Rulerwork, Rulerwork Quilting, Fun and Fancy, Template Quilting, FabriKated Quilts, Back to Back Curves, Spin E Fex, Circles on Quilts, Simple Oval Template

Id: Iwa5l6fGU_k

Length: 87min 10sec (5230 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 11 2020