Rulers

As promised to some of you, here's a few shots of my setup when I use rulers with my domestic sewing machine.  Rulers are used frequently by long arm quilters to help them with quilting out some designs, and with the right tools and equipment, they can be used with a regular sewing machine, to assist when free motion quilting.  Is it really FMQ if you are using a ruler?  I'm going to say yes, as I use them with my quilting foor on, the feeddogs down, and I'm controlling both the speed and direction of my quilting - I just happen to also be guiding the foot along the edge of a ruler.

So far I have a set of straight rulers and a couple of curved rulers, and I have used them both, and like the results.  To see some videos and read about some tips and techniques to using these rulers, check out Amy's Freemotion Quilting Adventure, where she goes into a lot more detail then I will here.  This week is also her last Free Motion Monday Quilting Adventure - Ruler Work, and I will be linking up there.

In order to easily use rulers, you must have a flat surface to work on.  My machine is set into a table, which gives me that.  I also use a super slider which helps in moving the quilt around, and I use quilting gloves.



The rulers I have are made by Accents in Design and are really easy to hold on to while you are moving the quilt as they have two pegs, and a strip of velcro tape on the bottom that stops them from slipping.  Oops!  I didn't take a good picture of my rulers - please check them out at Accents in Design here

Then you need a free motion foot that you can run up against the edge of the ruler.  The image below shows you the difference between my regular free motion foot, and the ruler foot.  Notice how thick the ruler foot is?  That allows it run along the edge of the ruler, with no worries that your foot will slip under the ruler and you'll break a needle, or worse.  The edge of the foot running against the ruler means that your line of stitching will be offset by 1/4", something to keep in mind as you are planning your quilting.

Ruler foot on the left, regular free motion foot on the right

ruler foot running against the edge of the ruler

Following are a few pictures of my hand position, the ruler/foot position and the stitched lines.

Use the etched lines, or in this case the velcro on the bottom to line up your next row of stitching.

 and here's what I worked on today

of course I had to add some feathers!

Happy quilting!

ps. - I'm linking up to the Needle and Thread Network this week - still have to get the binding on this baby!