Live Chat! Machine Quilting with Pointy Rulers

hello everybody welcome to this week's live chat um we're going to be talking about quilting with pointy rulers i'll be answering your questions a lot of stuff to cover today but first thanks for joining me it's crazy to think that we're already five weeks into this challenge that's been five tutorials now five live chats and i love seeing everybody's comments that they're getting more comfortable with quilting with rulers even if you don't think it's perfect i'm sure it looks great and it just takes practice i promise um so in this week's channel or this week's live chat i'm going to go over the challenge i have a little video to show you that i put together we're going to answer them answer your questions i'm going to tell you about build a quilt my block of the month that program that i have that's starting up and i'm also going to announce the winner of this week's giveaway and the new giveaway for next week so a lot of content to go over plus i've been chatting with everybody before i went live and got some good questions that i'll address as well so hopefully you can stick around because we've got a lot of information all right so the first thing i want to do is i want to share a little video that i put together i don't know why i just have so much content i can't hardly fit it all in the tutorial and so i took some content that i had to cut out and i put together a quick little little video and i posted it on the facebook group the free motion challenge facebook group so some of you may have already seen that if you're not a member of the facebook group there's a link to it in the description box you can definitely check it out it's a fun group that people share pictures um ask questions it's it's a lot of fun and so that's where i put that quick little video i didn't have time to do the whole intro and everything but anyway the one thing i want to show you is when we're going around those points even if it's a right angle or more of a curve we're going to do everything the same way so here i was showing how to use chevy to go around that point because even if i went all the way around it without repositioning i would get a curve well it's going to be the same thing right i'm still going up to that point until like i feel like i'm going to go over it and then i'm going to reposition the ruler so i'm going to slide it over and continue right down so doesn't matter the point you're still going to address it the same way go right up to it reposition to the other side of your foot and come back down and here we'll see it one more time what's nice about the chevy ruler is you don't have to flip the whole ruler around so it makes it a little bit easier now i also have a quick little thing i'll show you here in a second where i'm using an arc ruler so if you have a bigger arc ruler from earlier in the challenge or maybe you have archie you can definitely still create that now if you notice it's a little blurry but that arc has a point but still we know if i go all the way around it it's going to be more curved so i'm still going to stop reposition the other side and come down now this ruler is fairly big but i'm only using the very tippy top of it and i think that's what's amazing about rulers you can definitely use all the different sizes or kind of use it to fill in the space that you have and so if nothing else just remember that you can use the rulers you have for a bunch of different areas okay one thing i want to point out though is if you look at this border that i'm working in if we imagine that the red is the block and the teal is the border i'm working from the other side and it was kind of fun i saw somebody commented on that in the live chat if i'm going to turn the corner it really depends which side of the border i'm quilting on and honestly i didn't even think about that when i was doing the tutorial until after i had this content here so i'm still going to work around the difference is when i go to turn the corner i'm not looking for the inner corner i'm looking for the point directly across from it so basically i'm imagining that that point directly across from the inner corner is where i want it to line up sometimes when you're looking at your borders if it seems overwhelming try to think of it as a rectangle or a strip that corner is a different shape right we'll learn how to deal with that but if i can think of it as a rectangle and i want to get to that particular point and so here i'm just kind of showing where it is and then getting to that then once you get to that point then you can do whatever you want in that corner and here i'm just doing a simple little kind of curved line in the tutorial we saw how to use a motif in that area or you can put a completely different design there as well it doesn't have to be the same shape you can put some swirls or whatever design now here we can see i've finished that section i'm on the outer corner if i want to do the same thing i'm going to go to the other side so i'm going to travel over there and quilt them in this particular example though i flipped it around so i'm still quilting those arcs they're just flipped in the opposite direction now when we saw the taj design i kept them all going the same direction so you can definitely have fun and go with all those different directions with this so i hope you know that kind of helps clarify some things i know i know it can be a little crazy thinking about it sometimes but as long as you kind of have an idea where you want to turn that corner usually that will help you do it so sometimes i feel like when i give suggestions i make it more confusing hopefully that helped demystify it just a bit remember you don't have to do something special in that corner you can do something completely different so i always like to remind you that all right so now let's look at some pictures okay so speaking of border corners this is the sample that um i had in the in the video and i used the taj ruler to create those lines overlap them but remember when i want to turn the corner i was aiming for that inner corner and then rotating around it if i wanted to i could have again done something different i could have added a different shape or more lines i think in the sample that i quilted during the challenge i only did one main loop but you can really have a good time with that this particular example though i was quilting all those taj lines on the same side so i was working from the same side and that's why i didn't have to worry about turning the corner on the other side but i want to show you um if you look in the near the blue border that's just below it that navy blue i have some arcs there and so this is what we're going to see next week because we're going to work with clamshell rulers but it just goes to show you that you don't have to put anything too freely in the corner just turn the corner and move on so try not to worry too much about it i know it's easy for me to say because i'm on the other side but you can definitely create some cool motif or effects okay so let's talk about oh wow that kind of glitched up sorry speaking of motifs i hope you're not tired of them this was the third week in a row that we've seen them if you're tired of them don't worry this is the last the last week but we were using taj that wider ruler to create that narrow motif just by repositioning it and if nothing else hopefully that will give you the idea that you know i can use these shapes in a lot of different ways so if you have a ruler that doesn't quite fit doesn't quite work you can reposition you can kind of make those customizations now in the tutorial i used the arc ruler to make that space a little smaller and easier to manage next week we're going to see a little bit more about combining rulers when you have a bunch of rulers you probably just want to play with all of them right so definitely kind of have fun with that now when it comes to motifs though since this is the last time we're going to see it in the challenge i think anyway i don't plan on bringing it out you can do a lot of different motif designs so if you remember we're just taking that shape and rotating it around a fixed point that's it whether that point is the middle of the block or a corner it doesn't doesn't really matter which one but there are some different ways you can go about it so here i have the same taj ruler except i'm creating this kind of motif and i left the ruler in the picture so you can see it i'm rotating around that fixed point but the lines aren't going back into the center so it's creating more of a i don't know florally kind of effect so repositioning it was easy i just kind of used that middle reference line to that dot to kind of align up on the corners but another reason that i included this picture is if you look at the corners you notice how the top left one is a little more rounded that's the effect you get if you go all the way around if you want the sharp point upper right you can see repositioning it will give you that slightly different look now somebody mentioned in the chat that it makes it narrower and it does you're adjusting it it's going to make it at least a quarter inch smaller because there's a quarter inch in between your needle and edge of your foot so it will shrink it a little bit but i'm getting that nice sharp point and ultimately that's what i'm wanting all right when it comes to using our motifs using our rulers for motifs sorry i love the chat somebody said how many rulers do i own a lot a lot a lot i love them anyway um when i worked with taj on the motif you noticed i had the wider side at the bottom and the pointer at the top well here i'm just flipping it around doing the same thing though right i'm using the the wider point towards the outside it's going to give me more of a flower look less of a pointy kind of leafy motif so you can flip your rulers around and try working from you know other sides than what's normal in fact this is where these fun little variations can come out and if you try it and you don't like it then you just don't do it again right sometimes knowing what you don't like is just as important as knowing what you do like so try flipping it around try you know not going all the way to the point give you a different effect also let's see um chevy so i did not know but somebody asked can you show me other things you can do with chevy and i had already had this one in here but basically i'm rotating that shape around that middle point so really kind of use your imagination with your rulers you can come up with some really neat effects and all i did here is i created my first motif and then i started again offset and did it again and i could keep going and make a really cool effect but i kind of decided to stop there i know i've said this before in several live chats but it's so important when you're practicing i think it's great to load a piece of fabric or make a big quilt sandwich and try a bunch of different things challenge yourself see oh how many different ways can i use this ruler it's really going to kind of help exercise the different directions the different effects and then when you're done cut out the pieces you like throw away the rest and then you have some examples to go back to and ultimately that's what happened with these you can tell they're all on that same tealy kind of fabric that's because i was just playing around and then i'm only showing the pictures of the stuff that i like okay so another question so the question did come up what can you do with chevy so i threw a couple pictures in here real quick this is um stair stepped lines with chevy this was actually in the wavy ruler handouts it's in one of the handouts that we saw i think it's wavy ruler anyway um you can go back to that challenge and find the handouts and it will have that how to do it but really cool kind of stair stepped effect and this is the same thing just shifted so when we did rulers remember we talked about um rippling them or moving the ruler over this is what i'm doing here just moving it over quite a bit to create that different effect and i really liked this one because it kind of creates these pods that you could fill in with other designs and i'm just quilting along and changing the orientation so when you're working with your rulers it's all about changing the orientation the direction the spacing we talked about that with the wavy rulers but it's true with everything when you change up those little things that's when you come up with the variations and i would much rather learn five different ways to quilt one design then learn five completely different designs so be sure to play with those variations it'll just give you more bang for your ruler quilting buck okay so now i want to tell you a little bit about build a quilt so build a quilt and there were some questions on the chat too but build a quilt is my block of the month it's a program that we started four years ago runs once a year and it's a way to customize your quilt so i like to say it's like a block of the month but better because you get to choose your colorways so we have three different color options and then we have three different optional finishing kits that you can purchase so a lot of variation and up to this point they've all the blocks and patterns have been designed by me but now for the first time i'm designing the fabric collections as well so when i was preparing the challenge i was also designing three different fabric collections for builder quilt and i'm excited to show it so signing up for build quilt you get the pattern and fabric for 10 blocks it's one time fee depending on if you're international or u.s the price is different u.s is 69 so 69 you get one of these mailed to you every month for 10 months and it makes those 10 cute blocks so this is the inked color way i'll show you more about the fabric here in a second one other color option is the flag day it's more patriotic it just shows you the same blocks and the different colors and then stay wild so this is a different uh the three different colorways so it's amazing how just a different fabric placement creates such a different effect but i gotta tell you i'm super excited about the fabric so if you don't like these fabrics don't tell me because i designed them but the first one is flag day this is a patriotic theme uh fabric i feel like you know right now maybe a little pancreatic unity would be nice and we're actually teaming up with quilts of valor and donating a portion of the proceeds to them so if you are a part of quilts of valor or you want to get involved with that there will be finishing kits that are applicable for what they need and they're also supplying labels and for the donations so really excited about that stay wild is the other colorway so this is very floral inspired very nature this is a little tricky for me because i'm not a huge flower fabric lover but i really had fun kind of thinking about this soft nature inspired collection that still is wild so we're talking sage greens some warm taupes some different floral prints and textures with a little pop of like a dusty blue so very very fun and then there's inked so this is actually my favorite uh during the pandemic or the during the shutdown pandemic is still going on during the shutdown i took up calligraphy which is so weird um that i would take that up but i loved it and so that inspired this collection in fact if you see that on the left there's little phrases written i actually wrote those with my calligraphy pen so very scripty teal and gray my favorite colors thinking eating spots and stuff like that so really kind of fun and if you're interested in signing up you can do that there's a link in the description box below one of the questions came out was when will registration close registration will be open through the end of november so you can definitely sign up anytime before then the great news is since i'm designing the pattern and handling the production of that we're not going to run out of fabric last year was really rough for build a quilt because we had a hard time getting a lot of our fabric orders in and so this brings me to this week's giveaway whenever we do build a quilt we have an optional oops kit oops kit that lets you have a little bit of each fabric in case you make a cutting mistake not that i think people will but you know or if you want to make a fabric substitution this time and since the designs are all mine i was able to design a panel that has a strip of all the fabrics so they're all on one piece makes a quick little baby quilt or fun practice for quilting and one lucky winner is going to win a oops kit or the fabric panel in the colorway of their choice so you'll have the hard part of choosing but you'll win the um the oops kit or the fabric panel so to do that there's a link in the description box you can click on that and we'll and we'll get that out also alicia won the last week's giveaway the thread kit and i've already emailed her and let her know it's coming so congratulations alicia and good luck this week to whoever um you know to all of you and one lucky winner is going to get that so let me real quick get back to where i'm at there we go it's fun trying to coordinate all that stuff so now that's a little bit about build a quilt a little bit about the last challenge let's answer some of the questions that came through and then i'll peek on over to the chat and see if there's any uh questions there so um oh question about the low shank rulers so the three low shank rulers that were read my my new three low shank rulers from previous rulers those will be coming to us on monday so there was a delay in production you know what are you gonna do but as soon as they come in we've got everything ready to ship those out so if you've ordered them from us they will be coming soon if you've ordered them from somewhere else they'll probably be coming soon too they are shipping from creative grids and probably have already shipped we should be getting them on monday so if you are waiting sorry we'll get that going all right another question was or was more of a comment it was like when you're trying to turn the corner with your taj ruler um when you go adjust the ruler or you get that point you're actually making your shape a little narrower and so that can be hard to guesstimate where that corner is going to be so and the person had commented it was just really hard to hit that corner okay perfect example of having best laid plans right having it all figured out and then realizing like oh i still have to kind of fudge it a little bit or be creative with the placement so being comfortable with that will make it easy even if you plan on marking out another thing i'd say is if you measure the not the ruler but the transition points that will show you how far you're gonna go so if you're like okay i'm this far let me guesstimate it there's a reason i wait until i'm almost to the corner if if i try to figure that out really early on in the border there's to be adjustments or it's not going to be perfect right because you know i'm free motion quilting there's no such thing as perfection and free motion quilting so if i get you know about a third of the way there or kind of close then i can kind of plot out the next couple steps but knowing that when i'm faced with the option of either having two you know like a big one and a really skinny one or two that are both a little smaller i'd rather spread out that through a several of the shapes it just makes it less noticeable so yes going reposition the ruler will make the ruler more narrow but i promise it's not you can still figure out the spacing i hope it made sense in the tutorial the two different ways that i use taj whether i was using just the very top or i'm using the bottom just to create different effects ultimately just remember when you're going through your border and you need to reposition just make the reposition line the same on your ruler as long as it's consistent wherever it is it's going to be fine so hopefully that helps i will say turning corners is just it just takes a little practice right and it's one more thing you have to think about you're already thinking about holding the ruler and keeping it close and now we have to think about where we end up but that's why this video is week five and not week one right we're kind of building off of it so um try not to get too too hard on yourself with that okay another question that came up and i thought this was great was talking about transitioning with wavy rulers so if you've already done the wavy ruler challenge or if you quilted with wavy rulers you know as you quilt from needle stop to needle stop and reposition sometimes that transition is a little jagged right that transition looks a little off well it's going to really i mean can't be perfect but here's a couple things to think about if you're getting like a jagged stitch and this happens to me sometimes look at the position of your quilt sometimes what happens is when i stop the quilt maybe sags a little bit i reposition the ruler well right now the quilt is being held up by the needle right it's maybe pulling a little bit when that needle comes up and before it goes down that quilt is going to shift a little bit and then you have that jagged point and that happened to me a couple times while filming on a long arm that's not the case but on a sewing machine definitely so when you go to reposition just take a second make sure the quilt hasn't shifted or isn't pulling on the needle and that will help you avoid that little jagged stitch or just do it a couple times and make it you know make it a unique feature of the quilting design if you're more worried about the stitch length right so maybe as you slow down the stitches get small and as you take off they're small and they get bigger if you don't like that change in stitch length which you know i think it just adds a little bit of texture to it um if your sewing machine has the function like where it kind of revs up i mean think about like driving a car you get to a stop sign you stop and then you go you're kind of shifting momentum so getting comfortable with easing in and out will really help the hq stitch 710 which is what i use when i push push on the gas it ramps up to the speed i have it set so it's kind of like goes you know with my hands a little bit so if you have the option try that if you don't don't worry about it the more you practice the more you kind of get used to speeding up and slowing down into those stops i don't know if this analogy will help but if you've ever been in a car with a new driver and they get to the stop sign you know they wait till they get there and they slam on the brakes and then they take off that's the same kind of thing as kind of easing into the stopping point and then easing back out and we can all pretty much do that it just takes a little practice so hopefully that helps you out a little bit on the long arm i'll say that the transition is the stitch length and keeping it even is the trickier part so stitch regulator will help that and then using the reference lines to make sure that stays straight but ultimately um just practice it was funny because sorry i don't remember her name now the gal that asked the question said it says it is it normal to have the jagged lines i said yeah it's normal but not unavoidable so if you have it you're completely normal you're just getting used to transitioning in and out of the the different ones so hopefully hopefully that helps there were a couple questions about moving the large quilt that's definitely the big thing right um and i've talked about a couple times well now we're getting on the quilt where we're kind of working on the diagonal and not necessarily on the edge so hopefully just taking your time making sure all the quilt is up you don't want any of that you know gravity pulling on it and just kind of focusing on the area that you have to work with right this area right here is what i have and that's how i'm going to work now i will say when i'm given the choice and i know i've said this in a couple videos i love to work vertically right i like to work vertically because i can use my arms to push and pull and i have my whole my whole arm length but on a sewing machine if it comes over here i can't go too far right until i run into it and so getting that momentum and trying to use it to help continue on really helps if you're quilting a large quilt on a sewing machine i would also say posture no i've said this before being taller than your quilt a little bit so you can push down using gravity on your side and then just you know try not to tense up too much i know that's our normal tendency to kind of do this but that's really going to end up not feeling very good so definitely have some good posture to help and just know that it's only the hardest in the center and that's why i like to start in the center of the quilt because it's never going to be harder than it is right there i know when i'm starting a new project i'm usually really excited about it so i'm all gung-ho so i like to tackle the hardest part first if i wait till i'm almost done with the quilt you know by that time i'm so over it i'm like oh i just want this quilt to be done so i like to do the hardest part first um so those are the questions that came up i'm going to flip on over to the chat cable i don't know if i'm saying your name right but what would be the best way to add extra lines on the ruler itself i don't have any here to show you but it's called glow line tape it's amazing it's like washi tape but it's thin and it's highlighter highlighter color so it's like red and yellow and green or pink hot pink yellow and green and you can just cut off a little piece and put it right where you want that line to be it's not transparent but it's opaque a little bit so you can still see a little under it and like i love washi tape but that's it's pretty thick i mean even a half inch is pretty thick so you can definitely do that or using painter tape anything anything that isn't going to leave a residue that you can quickly and easily see what a matter i've actually used a sharpie before a little like a little line on there and then just rubbed it off later so whatever works make it you can do that um good question about getting into the middle of sid so that was a good question so i didn't show that on the long arm i'm always kind of conflicted like what to show where so sid's cut out doesn't have a like a channel into it and that's because when stitching on the ditch i don't want you to fall out of the ruler anywhere on long arms most have the ability to raise up the foot you have to kind of manually grab that foot and pull it up and then slide it in once it's in i just leave it in until i'm done with it right it just stays right there so hopefully that that helps um another question that came up on the facebook group that i didn't get a chance to address was how do you tie off with sid in there like if you're on a long arm how do you grab the thread and this probably won't make sense i'll have to do a little video for it but i just leave the ruler in place and i move the quilt and the ruler over grab that thread and then come back so i'm not digging in to sid to try to grab that thread i'm just moving the machine over and grabbing it coming back i'm sure that makes no sense so i'll make a little video that shows you guys how to do that it's actually pretty fun um so let's see oh karen said love the idea of the ruler storage in a notebook priceless right that wasn't my idea one of my students in one of my classes told me that i thought genius and in fact in the second season of the midnight quilter you might see a project that is like a diy kind of ruler case notebook thing so kind of excited to share that um oh nuland says i was also asking about sid on a sit down long arm same thing just going to raise up the foot and slide it slide it into there hopefully your machine has that raised up foot chris thanks for the calligraphy compliment love it i i don't know it was just something about those weird hobbies that we pick up when we're in lockdown and having something quiet and slow and it's so funny because my husband jeremy kept saying you know they make pins that always have ink in them you don't have to keep dipping it in the ink bottle but then i started collecting all the different kinds of inks and i'm like oh my gosh this is really fun so you know just a creative outlet i think it's great to have a lot of uh creative ideas so all right just gonna see oh kelly this is such a good question so i'll end on this one how do you get patterns for the previous midnight quilt show the links go to craftsy but the patterns are gone sad isn't it they go nowhere um the patterns were all owned by crafty and then blueprint i don't know where they're at now i don't unfortunately i don't know there i don't ha i don't they're not my patterns most of them were other designers and so i i don't i don't know i don't know you can contact the new craftsy and ask them if they're still offering them but i'm guessing maybe the pattern designers had an agreement with the old craftsy i don't know i'm sorry i wish i could be more helpful um but the good news is once we get into uh the new midnight quilter we'll have some new patterns and hopefully just erase those so so sorry about that kelly i wish i could be more helpful that's the the downside of when you don't own your own content which is why now i do my own challenges and videos and stuff anyway i digress all right next week's challenge is going to be the last official video of the challenge but we'll still have a bonus for the borders and it's going to be clam shells and these are going to be fun we're going to talk about creating different effects we're going to talk about combining rulers and then we'll be back for the live chat next thursday so i hope that whether you're caught up on the challenge or you haven't even started it doesn't matter i just hope that you're enjoying learning more and getting more confident with it and if you've liked this live chat or you like any of the previous videos if you'll give it a thumbs up or leave a comment on youtube that really helps me out as well well i hope you all have a safe weekend and i'll be back on monday with that next tutorial until then happy [Music] quilting

Channel: Angela Walters

Views: 12,819

Rating: 4.9836402 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: KMQT7P-xt_4

Length: 28min 54sec (1734 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020