I recently joined the Mini Quilt Mystery Club on Mishka’s Playground. The club runs for six months and each month introduces a quilt pattern that finishes at 24″. It started this month with Penny Candy. I’ve decided to use these wonderful mini quilts to hone up on my free motion quilting. With this quilt I decided to get my feet (um fingers) wet with using rulers on my Bernina.
Towards that end, I enrolled in Amy Johnson’s Craftsy class: Quilting With Rulers on a Home Machine (affiliate link). I have followed Amy’s Free Motion Quilting Adventures on YouTube for years. She is fabulous. Lately she’s been focusing on quilting with rulers and she’s given me the bug. Her class doesn’t disappoint. It’s chalk full of tips on handling the different rulers and ideas on how to use them. I’ll be watching this one again! She also provides a wonderful list of the rulers she used and the manufacturers….all in one place! I’ve spent hours hunting them down on my own and she has quite a few I missed.
When I first started working with the rulers, I found it awkward. But as I progressed, it did get easier. However, I’m still at the very slow stage of the learning process. I initially had trouble controlling the slipping of the ruler. Then I ran across a tip that suggested adhering Nexcare Flexible Clear tape to the back of the ruler. It made quite a difference for me and works better than the other products I tried. But I’m still slow at it. Right now it’s taking about the same amount of time it would take to mark and then just follow the lines on the sewing machine. But my lines are straighter and my curves are smoother. I still have little blips along the way but I know this will improve with practice. And I plan lots of it with my next quilt project…more to follow. Here are some closeups….
