Ruler Work Tips, Ruler Thickness for Low Shank Machines

hello this is Amy from Annie's FreeMotion quilting adventures you can find the blog at free motion quilting adventures.com and today I am showing a little ruler work a little setup for it I am quilting on a Janome 3160 which is a fairly standard sized sewing machine and it is a low shank machine and I've got the westerly ruler foot on it and something I wanted to show you about ruler feet I don't know that I've really mentioned before is that when the ruler foot is in the up position as this is this is down here's up do not use your needle up needle down to drop that needle I know we tend to do that sometimes when wanting to bring our bobbin thread to the top before we quilt and I'm just going to lower the needle down with my hand wheel and right now it's up against that ruler foot I can't get a full rotation so that just shows you this increased height of this foot is not compatible with having the needle down when the foot is up that's all the way it well it's not all the way down I can't lower it all the way it runs right into it I'm just going to bring it up if I drop the foot of course I can needle down no problem there's plenty of clearance just don't want to do it when the ruler foot is up and I'm just going to bring up my bobbin thread now this happen to be using a white thread in the bobbin right now and so you can't really see that I'm dropping the foot back down and I'm just going to do a little test stitching to see if I've got my foot set at just the right position and what I want you to see is that there's quite a bit of jumping up of the quilt top in the foot is what we call flagging it's kind of following up the needle I think you can see that it's kind of bouncing quite a bit as I stitch see if I can point it out here it's kind of bouncing a little bit and that's telling me that my quilt or that my foot is a bit too high on this quilt it is just right barely on there but I want to adjust it so I'm going to bring my needle up and get my screwdriver now Westerly gives a little wedge here and in theory you can put it when you don't have your quilt top in place I stole my quilt top in place on the bed of your machine and drop your foot on it and we'll help you set the height I have found for my machines it needs to be set lower I think that might be individual machine preference individual quilter preference so I'm going to loosen the Westerly foot it just slides up and down the shaft and I'm just lowering it just a little bit now if I lower it too low it is going to drag on my quilt top and I don't want that to happen either so let's drop it down and here it's not bouncing quite as much and it's not dragging on the fill top if you have your foot up to by you're going to have for stitch formation so now I'm just kind of building it's not pushing on my top what I have over here is a March square I'm just going to wiggle my way over to the corner and then just want to show using some rulers with this low shank machine that okay so I am at my corner I've got a nice square marked with a water erasable marker this is a fairly regular thickness long arm rulers the fine line ruler lovely little tool my thumb out of the way there so now more wine to go down and run out a rule I just slide it right down okay go now this ruler is 1/4 inch thick now what I want to show you is if I wanted to put it behind the foot I can't do it okay I lowered that foot down a little bit more and now it's not going to fit under there and that's with a low shank machine I also use high shank machine hi Shay machine doesn't have this issue but a low shank machine does your presser foot bar this bar right here that holds your presser foot on is low enough that it is going to hit the ruler and additionally the ruler toe as its I slid it down lower is hanging off the end of the presser foot bar I can kind of work it under there but that is just not ideal for quilting you've got to shove it in there that is not good for your machine so I'm going to show you Westerly has come up with alternate thicknesses of rulers until they started making thinner rulers so we've been encouraging people to use a long arm thickness ruler which is a quarter of an inch this is the thickness of ruler that they sell for a high shank machine you know then you can use standard long arm rulers with most high shank machines this is what they sell for that and so I can fit that under there it still can hang up if I don't have my ruler just nice and flat work around it but something I want to tell you is you don't have to go out and buy special rulers to use with ruler feet unless you want a certain shape that requires you to work all the way around your foot all right this is the ruler that comes with the westerly foot and you can see it's much thinner than the other two rule it goes underneath the foot in the back with absolutely no problem and so that's great and I'm just going to go ahead and keep stitching my square at the other corner I can put my ruler on this side of the foot put my ruler on this side of the foot it really doesn't matter right now I'm going to go back to that thicker westerly ruler because it's got these great little handles they sell these as an accessory the rulers come without them but these just stick on not certain how you could there you can see there's a little wiggle with the adhesive I think unless you really reefed on these rulers they're going to stay on and I'm just using alongside the edge of my foot that little off-track let's get back on track make sure you watch where the end of your ruler is you don't want to stitch right past the end of your ruler when you don't expect it because you're going to veer off in the wrong direction so I've got it in place or so there's a quarter of an inch from the needle to the outside edge of the ruler foot that's standard for quite a few ruler feet whether you're using a sit-down long arm or the domi ruler foot and just stitching across here you have to place your ruler one quarter of an inch away from where you want to stitch they're back at the center I want to show you is well you can still use regular long our rulers with with this machine even though it has a low shank and you can't get it behind the foot it's fine if I want to use it on this side I'm just going to get in position this is a new rule or for me from the quilted pineapple she's a long arm filter she's created her own line of rulers she does absolutely beautiful work and she uses rulers quite a bit in her work so if you want to go to the Fulton pineapple calm you see some beautiful images of ruler work they're done on the long arm but you can do it on your domestic machine now coming over here let's get it into position again 1/4 of an inch away you can't see my other corner this is funny you see how I'm positioning my hands part way on part way off with my gloves that helps hold the ruler in place I don't need any fancy adhesives or what-have-you I do need my thread to feed off my spool correctly and I had a little problem with that now I can place my ruler to go back up the side this side but I can't see what I'm doing very well now because these rollers have the same curve on the outside as on the inside I can use this inside curve to quilt on my quilt however because I can't get this foot under here very well I am NOT going to be able to use it on the inside curve and you can see our inside curve it can kind of wrap itself around under there now this curve is not so tight that I can't use it on this foot I just can't use it behind the foot you hear that tapping that's not on the ruler toe that is on the back of the presser foot bar here so I can't use it there I can force it under there but that's again not good for my machine and very awkward so I'm not going to finish out this square but I just wanted to show you the different thicknesses of ruler and how you work with them this ruler I mean I can I can tilt my Square and rotate it and I can run this ruler fine all right there I can run this ruler fine across the front of the foot even over onto the other side but that's going to mean more manipulation of my quilt and it is possible to kind of pivot your quilt and your ruler all at the same time when you need to get away from a particular part of the foot but it's of course not ideal I also want to show you a tighter curve that I've got here and you can see how if you use this and you wanted to run it straight up a curve of the seam or something it could quickly get hung up back on the back of the foot because of that curve I can only use it till about this point on the side of my ruler before it runs into the backside of that presser foot bar and this is a standard long arm quilting rulers three beds a quarter inch thick as is the fine line rulers the long arm rulers are perfectly fine to use it's just you can't get them underneath the backside of the foot on a low shank machine and I was not very clear before this one with the handle is thicker this is a westerly ruler again this particular ruler is sold with the high shank Wesley foot I happen to have a high shank Wesley foot and a low shank westerly foot because I have a high shank and a low shank machine that I use this is for the high shank and I can use this with this machine if I was using a very puffy quilt I might not have enough room it's kind of a snug fit and get this thinner one this is the thinner ruler that is sold for the low shank westerly flow you get so the light just so you can see that edge it is thinner it's about the same thickness as your rotary cutting rulers it's important to know that should you buy thinner rulers whether from westerly or you decide to use your rotary cutting rulers with a ruler foot it has to be a non hopping foot it has to be a ruler foot because if there was any hot to this foot and you're using this thin little ruler it's a very good chance that that hop would put it right underneath your foot okay if you have picked up a hopping foot for your machine or you're using a sit-down long arm please please please do not use your rotary cutting rulers or the thinner templates made for ruler work with a hopping foot this hop this foot does not hop it sits snugly on the quilt top so it's not going to slide up underneath the foot because of the height of the of the foot it's not going to pop up over but I just want you to know that if you are using a hopping foot please please stay with the thicker rulers one thing I did want to point out these new rulers I got from the quilted pineapple is about one millimeter thinner than my regular long arm rulers and I think that might be you know a little handy I'm not sure who she is is to manufacture her rulers I could hazard a guess but I'm not going to but just to know there are variations in thickness in the rulers and that is important if you have a low shank machine it may also be important if you have a high shank machine that just happens to be a little different than standard and maybe it's lower maybe you quilt on a very very thin batting and so you've got to lower your foot down I believe with a high shank machine you're going to be fine using long arm rulers there may be exceptions with a low shank machine you're going to be fine using long arm rulers as long as it's to the sides or to the front it's just if you even need to get behind the foot you just can't do it okay I hope that makes the whole concept of choosing the thickness for your ruler it for your ruler work for your machines on a domestic sewing machine or a sit-down machine a little bit more clear and once again this is Amy from Amy's FreeMotion quilting adventures you can find my blog at free motion quilting adventures.com i love to teach about ruler work i love to teach about all forms of free motion quilting stop on by and take a look thanks for watching bye bye

Channel: AmyQuilts

Views: 166,878

Rating: 4.8371906 out of 5

Keywords: free motion quilting, machine quilting, ruler work, quilting with rulers, Amy's Free Motion Quilting Adventures, Amy K. Johnson, Janome, Westalee, Westalee ruler foot

Id: KG4-6Al7gOg

Length: 17min 8sec (1028 seconds)

Published: Tue May 26 2015