Live Chat! Machine Quilting Clamshells and Orange Peels

hey everybody welcome to this week's live chat um i hope you're having a great week so far in this chat we're going to talk about the last video of the challenge as far as the designs go and we do have one bonus video next week about quilting the borders but this week we're going to talk about clam shells and quilting along those curves and how to fill in the space and some variations of course i'm going to answer your questions there have been a lot of great questions chatting right before the video went live so i've got those written down i'll also peek back in and see what's being said on the chat after i'm done with the pictures and and hopefully get any of those questions answered that you have i'll announce the next giveaway i will tell the winner of last week's giveaway and some other fun stuff so definitely lots of things to pack into a half an hour but first let's go over the clamshells designs and let's see some different tips or tweaks that might help you with those okay so for the first time we're working with a curvy ruler now i know with the wavy ruler we were talking about the point of contact changing along the ruler but now that point of contact is becoming more extreme right so that point of contact is going to go all the way from one side to the bottom to the next side and so that's why this video is the last one of the challenge it's not the first one because it's probably the most difficult thing if you've been quilting along it and you notice that it kind of goes off track that's just because we're not paying attention to that point of contact and just kind of taking your time and keeping it into the ruler so when we take that clamshell shape though or that curvy shape we're basically quilting a half of a circle and circles are something that are really hard to freehand or quilt consistently at least for me with it with any quilting design we want it to be you know symmetrical and it's really hard to sustain that curve over you know freehand so i like to use clamshell rulers anytime i want to get that nice circle shape so here we have the basic clamshell design right where we're quilting rows of arcs and we're stacking them on top of each other now if you downloaded the quilting diagrams that's probably going to be very helpful because what we're doing is we're quilting rows but we're off setting or we're flipping around or we're overlapping it's going to help you keep track of the different designs so in this particular one this is our clam shell i want to talk a second about how we approach the quilt so this is something i didn't really get into in the tutorial but when you're quilting on your sewing machine you have the choice to quilt all your clam shells and then if you want to add orange peels come back and add your orange peels you also have the opportunity to quilt each row if you want to add the orange peels or the upside down shape you can do that as you go it really depends on your preferences now i would say if you find holding the ruler one direction is more comfortable for you i would quilt all of them that way and then come back and do the rest turn the quilt and do the rest the same way so on a sewing machine you have a little bit more freedom to kind of change that orientation on a long arm you don't not it's not as easy to change the orientation of the quilt obviously so on the long arm i'm definitely going to handle all that quilting as i work my way down so if i'm doing the first row and then adding my orange peels i'm going to do that and work my way down the area but have you noticed these clam shells kind of stack on top of each other that means if i'm quilting on my long arm from the top down i'll actually quilt them upside down so i'll start here and kind of stack them that way if that doesn't make sense don't worry about it it's just thinking about the different ways you approach that area depending on what machine you're working on now let's say you have the bigger ruler you have the shelly ruler or whatever and you want the quilting to be a little bit more dense that's definitely where the orange peels come into play so adding that next line of quilting that's going the opposite direction and offset is going to create denser quilting this is also going to be a great way to hide any lines that aren't perfect right we've seen this a lot during the challenge if you make a mistake how do you handle it you keep making more mistakes around it till it goes away so if i quit my first row and i'm like no i'll add some more orange peels and and keep that quilting to help you know kind of help hide it so this is definitely for something that's going to be more dense or where i want more detail in the quilting now the thing to remember though with orange peels and really clam shells too when you're this close to it you're going to see where the line is off a little bit or where it's not quite right but when you step back your eyes kind of turn that whole design into a pattern and it's going to look fine now i'm using contrasting thread so that you can see what i'm doing you're probably going to want to use matching thread color so that you don't have to deal with that all right so then we also talked about real briefly adding echoes so the reason i like to do echoes is maybe i want a little more detail in the quilting or maybe i find it easier to quilt in a certain direction okay so if i find that i can quilt clamshells great from left to right i can do the clam shells left to right and then the direction that i'm not comfortable in the right to left i can just do some echo lines right because i'm just kind of doing a little bit less i don't have to think about lining it up quite as much so when you're working with any design knowing what your preferences are or what you're comfortable with and using the quilting to make it easier on you will really be helpful so in this particular instance i like to quilt one way so i do the hardest part in my eat and the way that's easier and then i do the easier part on the way that's harder if that doesn't make sense then just pretend i didn't say anything but echoing is definitely going to help that help with that it's also going to kind of draw attention to the individual clamshells not as much as the overall texture so in this particular example i'm adding just a little bit more of that spacing remember echoing is like a frame or kind of parentheses it highlights what it's around now what's fun about this sample is that you don't have to stick with one kind of clamshell over the whole area i think it's great to switch it up as you're going especially if you start following a routine it can make a really cool effect and you can really kind of have fun with it you can add more echoes if you wanted you could add you know you can really play around with it and come up with a lot of variations now one thing that i didn't really get a chance to talk about if you look at this picture at the top of my area if you're filling in a defined area with your clam shells you might find that you get to the end and you don't have quite enough for a whole row if that's the case we're just going to move the ruler down a bit and shrink them up a little bit like we've already done with the arcs and the taj and the motifs so that top that top row is a little bit shorter because it wanted to fill in that area i could have also used echoing to fill it in like if it's you know just a little bit off i could add some more echo lines or i could have put some filler of any kind in there right i could have put some swirls or really anything i want the trick to remember is that i just don't want to leave a gap in the quilting as long as everything is filled in it's going to look fine so whether you add your arcs or whether you make them shorter doesn't matter okay so if you've had a chance to try any of the quilting i hope that you tried this one combining the clam shells with a different ruler is such a fun way to add a little pop of texture to it it's also great because i don't have to worry about connecting it somewhere down the line right so if i'm working on my long arm and i just want to put a little cluster in here because i don't want to have to try to figure out how to make them match up this is going to be really helpful or maybe i don't want to commit to doing clam shells over the whole quilt because i'm still trying to get the hang of using this ruler so doing them in sections will make it just a little easier and i think it's really fun and whimsical now this might not be for every quilt but definitely for more novelty quilts fun you know quilts that are more more fun i guess that's not what i really want to say but something like that so it could add a really really neat texture now the trick to that if you remember is to stack them on top of each other i'm going to backtrack along the previously quilted clamshell now when we're filling in a specifically defined area that's like a rectangle sometimes we'll travel along the edge of the area to get to the next one but here we're not doing that we're traveling right back along the one we quilted and this is going to be fine because i'm going to leave that ruler in place quilt along and then come right back up now if your ruler doesn't have those reference lines like the middle or the bottom you can definitely mark those out that's going to make your life a lot easier whether you use like low line tape or washi tape or sometimes i've used a sharpie just to kind of mark the line you want to keep that repositioning point consistent and it's going to make that cool stacked effect and whether you make a stack of orange peels you add in a few just add in one or two it's a really neat thing to do and i think it's just something that looks more difficult than it really is now when i'm quilting on both sides of a section though that can be tricky if i'm doing those wavy lines so if you notice throughout all of the sample i have my sections there really isn't one yeah there really isn't one wavy line that goes from one edge to the other so the whole idea here is i'm using those clam shells to break up that space and make it easier to manage so if you're quilting with your wavy ruler and you're having trouble with the repositioning or you're like i want to practice wavy rulers but i don't want to do it over this whole big area throwing in those sections or those chunks will break it up and make it easier to manage again when it comes to quilting those waves the most important thing is that you fill in the whole area whether they line up perfectly or not it's going to be nice and dense it's going to make that unquilted clam shell pop out so try not to worry too much about that you can also use free motion quilting which for me is probably what i would do i'm having a little bit of ruler work a little free motion quilting i like to change it up keep me from getting too bored so you can definitely use it to break up bigger areas make it easier on yourself especially if you're on your sewing machine working on a big quilt it's going to make it make life a lot easier for you all right so we i showed real quickly a few variations when it comes to changing up the design think about direction upside down or right side up and think about offset whether it's an echo or it's offset so in the lighter blue strip i showed just real quick with archie how that's quilted in four different sections or let's call them passes and i'm simply quilting one row and then offsetting it and then doing the same on the other side and so the more i do the more intricate that design is going to be now this is definitely not something i would do over the whole quilt that would take forever but in a strip or a sashing or in an area that you want just a little bit more quilting it's going to create and create a neat effect now the thing is try not to stress so much about the lines lining up perfectly because you know kind of creates this other design inside of it just get it as close as you can and move on now in the darker blue we can see that i have quilted my clam shells and then i offset and quilted right on top of it so basically what i did with the archie ruler just quilting it right on top of each other this is nice if i don't want to change direction of the ruler now i designed shelly so that it would you know quilt the same arc on either side no matter which side of your foot you worked on but if you don't have that and you don't want to flip your ruler over maybe you're on the long arm and it's tricky to hold it that way this is a variation that will make that a little bit easier so still getting somewhat of that clamshell look or definitely the clamshell look a little bit of the um orange peel not quite exactly but definitely making it easy all right so i almost i almost put this in the video but i said no i promise no more motifs um this is an example of using the shelley ruler or the any curve ruler to make a motif so everything that we've learned so far right we're quilting it rotating it around a center point i just want to show you you can create motifs even with those those shapes and of course that dense filler in the background really helps it pop so just a fun variation there okay so in this block hopefully it made sense i know it was kind of quick but when you're quilting blocks or designs or parts of your quilt you can combine the rulers to create some really interesting effects and so in this particular block i combined a lot of different rulers i did the shelley a cut out ruler the circle an arc and a straight edge the idea is just kind of play around with the rulers you have and create some fun designs you'll never know what you come up with and this was a fun kind of like okay i'm going to quilt this block and move on and since i quilted those curves so if you see the lighter blue blocks in the blue box in the center those curves that are going around it are actually helping me move from petal to petal to petal so that i can quilt the whole thing without starting and stopping so even though i'm using multiple rulers i still want to do it as efficiently as possible you know because there's lots of quilts to do and not quite enough time for them another thing i didn't get a chance to show is in that dark blue border so those um clam shells or those curves can make a really neat scalloped design this could be for a cute feminine block a smaller sashing and i've just quilted on two sides because you know i just didn't want to mess with other corners and so you can use those those scallops in a lot of different ways or the curvy rulers in a lot of different ways so here is cute little border design and this is kind of a last-minute picture i threw in there really a clam shell technically is half of a half of a circle even though you don't have to have exactly that shape but if you have half a circle you can create a full circle so if you want to create these circles just by quilting around it and flipping it over and continuing on it can be a really neat um way to divide up your area and fill it in so just an option there not one i use a whole lot because i don't you know that just seems kind of a pain but you know um on the top of this picture we have using um shelly to do that same design i did with archie so a little bit more dense creating that secondary effect but in the bottom picture you don't have to orange peel on every single row so the first row i quilted my arcs and i quilted my orange peels but on the second row i just quilted the clamshells so i get this kind of fun little like flower shape which i could come in later and fill in with some different designs or maybe it's an adorable border design or maybe i just want to only do one row of orange peels because it's taking forever and i'm over it so sometimes that can be the case as well so you can definitely change up how you actually quilt it i know i showed that example earlier but you can add orange peels on every other row you can add a couple add it in here there or wherever really kind of have fun with it and the last picture i have is just i was playing around with the shelley ruler and trying to see some different designs it makes an adorable little leaf shape if you want to quilt that if maybe you're quilting a border design like that or using back tracking to create the viny uh design that's on the left and there i'm just quilting half the arc right so half the arc back tracking repositioning and doing the same so it kind of looks like you have clam shells that are hidden behind the area it's just an easy way to to do that this would be really helpful if you're not comfortable going around the whole ruler because you're only going up half of it so you can definitely not use the whole ruler if you're having trouble with that so hopefully those pictures help out make a little bit more sense i know that quilting clamshells can be frustrating in fact one of the questions was or one of the comments was that some people found this one difficult and like i said that's why it's at the end of the challenge and not the beginning i promise just practicing a little bit will really help you especially if you're having trouble going around that curve right you're having trouble maintaining that point of contact just keep doing it i promise it'll get easier i promise it just takes a little bit of practice and then you can go ahead and switch it around and offset it maybe in the beginning just quilting around you know doing the first direction learn that and then try the other direction and quilt your orange feels sometimes we're trying too many different things at once and it can be really overwhelming okay so couple questions that were in the live chat i love getting on there and you know chatting with everybody and seeing some questions because usually if they're asking it means that some of you might be thinking the same thing one cute little question was where does sid get his name so all my rulers have names it was my way of trying to make it less intimidating right you can't be nervous around slim and you know elvira is the fun friend that's gonna help you make some curves sid actually gets his name from stitching in the ditch so sid sid is something back in back in the day when i started machine quilting there was no social media so we had yahoo forums does anybody remember that anyway that was the abbreviation you would use for stitching in the ditch so like as in help i'm sid and it looks horrible but that's where um sid gets his name some people noticed especially around the curve ruler that when they were going around that curve they would get a squeaking sound and that that happens to me sometimes too while i'm not a hundred percent sure what it is i'm sure pretty sure that it's the vibration of the ruler on the foot so that means that as the foot's moving along i think the ruler's wiggling just a bit and sometimes that squeaking can be pretty pronounced i know in my long arm sometimes i'll get that sound that usually means it's not being held in place it could also mean that your fingers aren't near enough the edge near enough to the edge to hold it down now we don't want your fingers so close right that they're in the way but you definitely want to have the most of your support close to the edge you're quilting so let's say you're quilting along the curve ruler my fingers are going to be right up along that curve but i still want to kind of make sure that it's close to where i'm at so i'm kind of not really rotating my hand but kind of adjusting the pressure depending on where it is again that's something that you can't really teach because it doesn't make any sense you know but just keeping that pressure where that foot is going to help keep it from squeaking or if it squeaks it's fine another thing i've noticed this wasn't um mentioned but this is something that i've noticed is when i'm using a ruler sometimes i'll get some residue on it for my long arm like maybe it's rubbing it and so i'll just kind of clean it off on my my batting so if you see that i think it's normal it's normal for me i don't know if it's normal for everybody else a great question that came up is what if your clamshell ruler doesn't have the needle stop right like shelly does well the needle stop just makes it easier right because it just stops for me but if you don't have it that's no problem you're still going to quilt along it and stop when you hit the edge of the area so if it's the seam of my block if it's the previously quilted row i'm going to stop at that point so definitely do that if your ruler is bigger than the area again you just want to make sure your repositioning point is the same on both sides so marking that out with a piece of tape will be really helpful especially if you're doing them over a whole big area because you'll be repositioning a lot and it will just make it a little bit easier so good question you definitely do not have to have the cut out or the needle stops you just need a repositioning point that is the same on both sides that you can consistently use that's it last week there was a couple questions about the live chats some people were having trouble finding them and i remember thinking i don't know what's going on so i went back in and found out that i had not been assigning them to a playlist so now all the live chats from this challenge are on the same playlist on youtube as this challenge so now you should be easier to find all the previous live chats so just like the tutorial videos the live chats will stay up indefinitely so that you can you know pop back in if you want to see a tip or a helpful point so if you have trouble with that you can definitely send me a contact message through my website but it should be right there in youtube okay jennifer had a great point she's struggling with stopping smoothly at that target point so unfortunately it's just gonna take practice i know like i hate saying it but it's true right so looking ahead of where you're at will be helpful much like driving a car i'm not going to look right at the end of the hood i'm going to look on down the road now that can be scary right when you're trying to keep your fingers in the point of contact that's why it takes a little practice so you can do all these things at the same time looking ahead will help you anticipate where you're stopping and then that will that will help it will become second nature after a while much like our handwriting or or things that we do without really thinking about it a funny point about that is my long arm at home is the handy quilter avante and so it doesn't have a as powerful motor as like the the amarra and so i will i've gotten used to stopping um a little bit sooner like right before the end point because i know it takes a second to do that but here in the studio i have an amara and so it's different it stops a lot faster and so i've had to like train myself like oh wait no i need to wait till i get to that end so even switching between machines can make that a little tricky but again it's just a little practice it's like when you drive a car and you learn how exactly how touchy the brakes are you know same kind of thing so hopefully that helps i know it's not a lot i can offer but looking ahead and just know where it's coming here's the thing though if you're quilting the clamshell design over a whole quilt by time you get to the end you'll be an expert at it so try try not to be too hard on yourself with that all right one last question that i wrote down and then i'll peek on over to the challenge and see how if there are chat and see if there's any um questions over there a question came up can we still buy panels from earlier challenges you can especially the last two well last three counting this one some of the earlier challenges that didn't have a panel some of that fabric is sold out but i think there's a couple that we still have kits for the panels and the kits and the quilts just make it easier for you to jump right into quilting they're definitely not required to quilt along that's why i want it to be where you could just bring your fabric and your machine and start quilting but some of the earlier challenge panels are still available so that's one of the benefits of producing them myself and then somebody commented that they really love the live chats because the tutorials seem kind of short and concise and i do know that's the case and that's intentional um i know that people's attention span especially on youtube can be short and so i think the word of wisdom that i've always read is to keep it you know within 12 to 15 minutes that way people aren't getting bored and clicking away so the live chats i knew would be helpful especially for the rulers because there's so much information about rulers less answering questions but when we were chatting before i was thinking these are really fun we should just keep up the thursday chats and so i think that's what we're going to do and like next thursday will be the day after the first midnight quilter episode so maybe i can talk about quilting feathers which is what i do in one of those so i'm definitely going to keep the live chats up hopefully you'll join me for those so let's see how everybody's doing um hello nancy from san antonio texas very fun okay cindy good question cindy said if you were to quilt a small quilt of clam shells all over where would i start i would start along an edge and then work my way out so whether it's the bottom or the top i'm assuming on a sewing machine on a long arm same thing i'd start on the edge but i know here's the question though right what if you want to start from the center because the center is usually the easiest place to start well what i'll do is maybe mark out one line i just need a registration line and so marking out that registration line or maybe my quilt has a seam across it maybe it's a jelly roll race quilt which is the best because you have all those seams then you can start in that middle row and then come back and add to it that will make it a little bit easier ultimately though i like to work vertically when i'm working on my sewing machine so my clam shell ruler always stays in the same hand i think in the video tutorial i can't remember i think i demonstrated horizontally because you can see it better with the camera but keeping it in one hand makes it a little quicker so i probably would start wherever i can quilt vertically and just keep building off of it the trickiest part to that is if you start in the middle in the next row you want it to kind of end up at the same spot it just takes a little bit of planning but you could also add some filler or do something different in that area so very good question um let's see oh good i love that everybody wants to still do the chats very fun there paula yes there will be a bonus video for the borders and that will be on monday and so what i'm going to do is just kind of give you some design ideas for quilting those borders with your rulers you might find that borders are a little bit easier to quilt because it's a smaller defined section if you're practicing with your rulers on just a piece of fabric sometimes not having those defined areas can make it a little overwhelming so having that defined area will really help help you do that um mary jean i always think you're searching for the live chats what's the easiest way to find you is it on facebook and youtube or just youtube it's on youtube so the live chats are always on youtube and then that's because anybody can get them even if they're not on facebook and so if you go to my youtube channel if you subscribe it'll send you a notification when the live chat is scheduled or when it goes live but you can also go to my website quiltingismytherapy.com and there's a free motion challenge tab and that's where you'll find all the previous challenges i have links to the weekly videos and i have some of the links to the live chats there too so youtube is where it's all held but you can find some of that information all kind of congregated easier over on my website we do have the facebook group the free motion challenge facebook group that's a great resource to share pictures and ask questions and stuff but that's not really where the live chats are they're all on youtube so um okay good question i was on my notes talking about upcoming things birthday party on saturday so my quilt shop is turning five it's like practically out of toddlerhood right it's like a child and so we're gonna have a virtual birthday party and i'm gonna be doing live demos every hour plus i will be showing the midnight quilter quilts so sneak peek before the midnight filter actually launches on wednesday it is on facebook so this is going to be on the shops facebook page so quilting is my therapy shop there's a link to it in the description box so you can check it out there and so basically every hour 905 because you know five years 1005 1105 i'll go live do a little demo about something and then show the quilt and then have a flash sale so anyway it's going to be a fun time it's just you know the world's different now and we're going to celebrate the best way we can and it's going to be virtually i'll be at the shop and we'll be just having a great time celebrating five years because you know i think it's hard for any retail business but to survive a pandemic and all the things i'm just very fortunate to have great customers so that's gonna be a fun time also um build a quilt is starting up remember i talked about that last week it's our block of the month in fact i was giving away an oops kit from that that's a panel with all the fabrics and carrie l1 i've already emailed carrie and let her know him or her i think it's a girl carrie that they won the panel that's going to be the same giveaway for the next week so there's a link in the description box to join that or to do the giveaway and if you think about it if you want to give this video a thumbs up or share it that really helps get the word out there i do appreciate it um just gonna look through any questions addie the midnight quilt show is no longer but the midnight quilter i know i make it kind of confusing don't i the midnight quilter will be on my youtube channel and that starts on wednesday super excited cannot wait for you to see it it's going to be great okay um sorry i was like all the questions i want to make sure i got everything yeah i think we got it all so next week we'll be back with the borders we'll talk about breaking it up into chunks show you some design ideas and hopefully get you kind of inspired to do that and if you have any questions about anything i've talked about there's links in the description box so after the video or the live chat is over you can check that out and find all the links there and thank you so much i mean i hope that if you have started the challenge i know that not everybody has because you know life gets in the way but i hope that if you've worked through a few of the videos that you're already seeing improvement and i hope that no matter where you are on your quilting journey that you'll be able to use rulers to do some different things maybe than what you even thought you could do so definitely um definitely a lot of fun and uh will you be able to view the birthday party after the fact i'm pretty sure the videos stay on my facebook page so yes i think you will so very good all right well everybody i hope you have a great week um i'll see you again on welcome to live party saturday if not video be out on monday and we'll do another live chat next thursday where i'll wrap up you know talk about the borders answer questions and also talk about the midnight culture so thank you so much and i hope you all have a great great week happy quilting you

Channel: Angela Walters

Views: 13,616

Rating: 4.9951458 out of 5

Keywords: angela walters quilting, angela walters quilting videos, angela walters quilting with rulers, angela walters rulers, angela walters tutorials, creative grids machine quilting rulers, daytime quilt show, free-motion machine quilting with rulers, machine quilting on home machine, machine quilting rulers, machine quilting rulers and templates, machine quilting with rulers, machine quilting with templates, quilting rulers for machine quilting, quilting with rulers on sewing machine

Id: _-l5h4ivE7U

Length: 29min 42sec (1782 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 05 2020