The Beginner's Guide to Machine Quilting with Rulers - Introducing Shorty

hi i'm angela walters from quilting as my therapy and in this video my friend shorty and i are gonna show you how to machine quilt with rulers now when I sat down and design these rulers for creative grids I had a specific person in mind for each ruler and when I had assigned shorty the person I had in mind was somebody that was new to machine quilting with rulers that's why he's so small I wanted him to be useful on any kind of sewing machine whether it was a small or a bigger one and I also wanted him to be hand sized and that meant you wouldn't be messing with a ruler that was unwieldy or too large for what you're quilting now that's not to say but it's not great for advanced quilters or even long armors because you can definitely use them on a long arm but in this video I'm going to show you what you need to get started when quilting on your sewing machine so first of course you need a good ruler secondly you might want to consider getting a ruler foot so a ruler foot is basically a free motion quilting foot with a higher lip on it what that means is that higher-profile is going to prevent the ruler from slipping over the foot and into the needle now we know what can happen if that happens right you break your needle you break your ruler and you pee your pants at least this is what I've heard now if you don't have one it's fine it's not absolutely necessary but you might find it helpful especially if you plan on using those rulers a lot if you're not sure if your sewing machine manufacturer makes a ruler foot go ahead and contact them or your dealer and see what they suggest most machines can be fitted with a ruler foot let me show you what I mean this is just your basic free motion quilting foot you might have something pretty similar but if you were to turn it over and look on the back you'll see that there's a screw and what that screw does is here I can loosen it and take that ruler foot attachment off so if you have a free motion quilting foot that looks similar to this chances are you can go ahead and get a ruler attachment for it and if you're not sure again go ahead and check your manufacturer or you can ask a question in the comments I'll be glad to answer it now I can almost hear you asking but Angela my machine has a high shank my machine has a low shank foot can I use your rulers well not to get confusing the height of your foot is really what determines that so some lower shank machines means that your foot is closer to the machine now you can tell my machine I have enough clearance for my foot on this side so I can use my ruler under here should I want to now if the ruler won't fit under your on your machine that doesn't mean that you can't quote with rulers you definitely can you're still gonna work from the left or the front of the foot which is actually you'll find where I spend most of my time when quilting with rulers okay so what else do I use when I'm quilting these are questions that I'm asked all the time so hopefully you find them helpful first of all one thing that I can't machine quote without is the supreme spider now that's what this thing is right here that supreme slider it gives me a nice smooth slick surface so that when I'm quilting that quote goes through there easier I normally also wear gloves now I'm not going to in this video since I'm working on a smaller project but if I'm working on a bigger quilt you're gonna catch me wearing gloves I do definitely like those so I have my supreme slider on I have my ruler foot on now let's get started with your first stitches how do you even begin quilting with your ruler well I'm so glad you asked because you know I'm gonna show you how to do it okay I'm excited to get started using shorty now when you're quilting with rulers the best thing to think about is that it's like a handle for your quilt I'm gonna position the ruler where I want to go once I have it in place I'm gonna press down with my hand and I'm going to hold my other hand on the other side and then moving the quilt I'm gonna run it along that ruler now what I'm doing is when I press down I'm actually activating that grip that's on the back of the ruler and that's helping hold it in place now once I decide I'm ready to move on with my line I'm just gonna reposition my ruler like so and then continue on so right here I'm just stitching along that scene now you might wonder what these little things right here for these are called needle stops and this is actually if I wanted to quilt all the way around shorty I could make it a repetitive shape but what I'm doing here is I'm almost using it as a guide along my seam so if I put that needle stop right along that seam I can guess that it's going somewhat flush with the quilt up here now this is especially helpful if you can't see the direction that you're quilting now the movements going to be exactly the same if I'm pushing the quilt away and bringing the quilting towards me so once I have it in place I'm gonna push down and start moving the quilt along that ruler once I run out of space I'm just gonna reposition and then continue on now the thing to remember is we're going for straight ish lines we're not going for perfectly straight doesn't have to be exact we're just using that as a guide to help our lines be straighter then we could quilt it with the free motion quilting foot so for vertical lines I'm working along the left side of the foot and this is exactly what I was talking about when I said that even if I can't fit the ruler over here I actually don't tend to work from this direction anyway because that foot does get in the way now when I position it horizontally I'm gonna do the same thing I'm gonna push down and move over except since I don't really have room to put my hand over here I might put both of my hands on that ruler and then move it along if I want to keep going I would just simply reposition my ruler and continue on but let's say I want to do some echoing and travel up and let's say I'm going to quote back the way I just came I'm gonna position my ruler either putting my ruler on that previously quilted line or just past it I'm going to press down and then move the whole quilt along this way and you can see what I'm getting are some nice straight ish line now let's pretend that you don't want the lines to be so close together maybe the person you're quilting this for isn't necessarily quilt worthy and you want to get it done faster well that's where these reference lines come in handy if I put my ruler along that previously quilted line I'm gonna have about a quarter inch torso space between them but if I put one of these dashed lines on my previously quilted line I'm gonna get something that's closer to a half of an inch spacing so these markings on here what they're doing is helping to keep the spacing nice and consistent so here I have a quarter inch that's a little bit closer let's do one that's about three quarters of an inch and what I'm going to do is just line up that second line on my previously quilted line push down and run it along the ruler stop and reposition if I need to and then now you'll see I'm getting my different spacing there and if I want to quote the line that's longer than my ruler all I have to do is quilt it reposition and continue on so this will work over your whole quilt or within defined areas like your borders another fun thing about shorty is that he has rounded edges now that's because he can make some really neat designs if you're a newer quilter you may find that curves are a little bit harder to quit with a ruler so these little baby curves are gonna give you just a little taste let you see what it's like and then decide if you want to go with the curve your ruler so let's see those in action but this is one of those instances that you're gonna see I'm working from both sides of my ruler so if my foot is a little too short and I can't move my ruler under that I'm gonna try a different design but for here I'm gonna position it and I'm gonna work my way around that ruler I'm keeping the foot flush to the right of the foot into the ruler as I go around that curve the point of contact is going to change so now I'm kind of at this point of the foot and I'm gonna eventually end up coming around to the bottom of the foot so as I'm turning that curve my point of contact between my ruler and my foot is gonna be a little bit different so just keep that in mind and that will help you keep that curve nice and smooth now I'm going to continue along and as I get to my next curve I'm gonna remember that point of contact it's gonna be slightly different I'm gonna quilt along it and then back down the side now if I wanted to repeat that and do it again all I have to do is move my ruler over and then quilt along that again coming right back up around the ruler taking your time and reposition your hands this is not meant to do in one complete movement you can definitely pause and move your hands and you can see now I'm getting this kind of fun rounded corner kind of shape but come on we know I like quilting things to death we need to quilt a little bit more in there so what I'm gonna do is actually flip my ruler around and do something like this where I'm going to quilt them upside down and offset it for a fun kind of design now when the ruler is behind my foot I'm kind of at a disadvantage right I can't exactly position my hand where I need it to be well what's great is if I wanted to I could just rotate my quilt and then continue on this way so either way is gonna be fine in fact the more that you quilt the more you'll find your preferences then it come until I touch my previously quilted line and then just reposition how do I know if I have it repositioned correctly well I have this middle line right down my ruler if I put that middle line right on my previous quilting it's gonna help make sure that this is nice and consistent and let's go around and continue this coming all the way around take your time move your hands if you need to and then come in until you run into that quilting line and let's do one more this will be a partial one and let's see how it turned out I mean come on how cute is that it's like kind of mod leaves or a fun little design I definitely can think of some clothes that's gonna look amazing on now these reference marks that I put on the ruler are not just for aligning the ruler to your quilting it's also to help you change up the size of your design this is one of my favorite things about this ruler earlier I quilted all the way around and that gave me a really wide shape but what I can do is quilt around till I get to one of the dashed lines and reposition the ruler and it's going to give me a more narrow shape so as I'm quilting I'm gonna run it along that ruler taking my time and then once it gets to one of these lines let's say it gets to that middle line maybe I think I don't want to do it much wider than this I can reposition my ruler and line it up with a different line so let me line it up with this one well let's see what we get [Music] and as you can see I just get a same kind of shape it's just a little bit more narrow what if we shrunk it down even more I'm going to pull it around I'm going to stop when I get to a line maybe I stop at this first line and I can reposition to that line and then go right along and then what I have there is another shape so if I want to do wider arcs or if I just want to do these along the whole border I can just using those reference marks another thing you can do with this ruler is treat it almost like a clamshell in which I quilt a row and then quilt another row on top of it it makes such a fun effect this would be a great way to handle bigger areas of your quilts or just to use your rulers to give it a slightly different look so as I go around my ruler and let's do one more go along my ruler and again once I get this point I usually switch hands there we go I've got two fun shapes let's just go ahead and quilt a partial one carry it right off the edge of this row now what I can do is reposition my ruler and quilt the same thing on top of it so basically I'm treating this previously quilted design as the edge of my area and then going around to fill up that space now what happens if they're not perfectly the same size nothing it's totally fine what happens if one doesn't look quite right just keep going it's going to look completely fine but as you can see now we're starting to see those offset shapes which are so very fun so like I said shorty is a great way for getting comfortable straight lines and kind of delving into the curves and having a fun time coming up with a lot of different variations for your designs so there you have it now I know I've thrown a lot of information out at you everything from what to do to get started to some fun designs you can quit with shorty so if you have any questions please leave them in the comments below I'll be sure to read and answer the ones that I can and also if you have a question about any of the supplies that I've used that's all in the description box below so be sure to check those out as well so now that you're ready to get started go ahead and get your rulers out and try to make some fun designs happy quilting

Channel: Angela Walters

Views: 281,836

Rating: 4.9077778 out of 5

Keywords: machine quilting, quilting rulers, angela walters, creative grids, quilting is my therapy, shorty

Id: yKBIDCU3xGQ

Length: 12min 42sec (762 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 08 2018