When I shared my Teal Basketweave quilt and Dot-to-Dot quilting last month, I wrote how difficult it was to achieve straight lines in the quilting designs I'd chosen to stitch. I was always one of those kids who wrote their class notes using a ruler to keep the cursive writing straight so having wobbly, wonky lines of quilting kind of drove me crazy!
The designs that Angela Walters teaches in her fantastic Dot to Dot Quilting Craftsy class are just what I wanted to use on my quilt and while I love the simple no-marking-required method, using a machine on a frame with those straight lines was just too tricky for me to control.
Another fabulous Craftsy class I signed up for a while ago is Kimmy Brunner's Machine Quilting with Templates. I joined at the time because I wanted to learn as much as possible about long-arm quilting, even though I didn't actually have a long arm machine nor did I have any templates or rulers! As I struggled with my straight-line quilting from Angela's class it occured to me that there may be some kind of help or insight in Kimmy's class. I watched her stitch the many straight-line designs with ease using a ruler and I knew I had to figure out how I could do the same.
I had purchased a free-motion frame quilting feet set for my Janome 1600P in order to get the open toe frame quilting foot, which allows you to see a better view of the needle drop position when sewing on a quilting frame. The set also included a 1/4" ruler foot so I was excited that I already had that 1/2 of the solution to straighter lines. I tested out the idea of using a ruler with my set-up (because the website that sells the templates says you need to have an extended base on your machine to use them, which is not available for my machine) so I tried quilting using the open toe foot and the seam guage ruler. As my dealer pointed out, the base on my 1600P is almost as wide as a longarm machine with an extended base attached anyway and obviously, if Janome is selling a 1/4" ruler foot, it should work with the machine's dimensions. Sure enough, I was able to guide the foot along the ruler's edge and make a (relatively) straight line.
I'm not sure why I didn't attach the ruler foot in the first place but of course, using the thin seam guage instead of a proper, thick, long arm ruler, I lost my concentration and hit it with the needle. Luckily, I didn't damage the ruler but of course my needle broke with a loud crunch. It's a scary situation but as Kimmy Brunner points out, "there are 2 kinds of template quilters: those who have hit the template and broken a needle and those who are going to hit the template and break a needle". I tried not to panic, removed the needle bits, and fortunately suffered no damage or timing issues with my machine. Knowing that in theory the ruler idea would work, I ordered my proper rulers and changed to the 1/4" ruler foot!
Since I have such a small quilting depth anyway, and a small base on my machine, I ordered the two smallest mini rulers: a 6" straight ruler and a multi-use, multi-curved ruler. Once they arrived I was so excited to try them out. I had no tension issues and got more comfortable using the straight edge with every stitch. I felt set free by the accuracy I could now stitch and the look of the designs on my quilt was soooo much better! It didn't take long before I could guage that 1/4" depth and hit my 'mark' (imagined or chalked). At the same time I was having some ah-ha moments with both the movements of my machine and the rolling of the quilt on the frame. Pairing the ruler and my epiphany just seemed to open up the clouds and set my quilting imagination free! I'll show you even more progress in an upcoming post! I feel like I'm cheating a little bit by relying on the ruler but that straight-lined, cursive writing Type-A person I've obviously always been is just jumping up and down with happiness!
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