Quilting with Rulers: Ombre Triangles Continue

My quilting is slowly getting done on my Ombre Triangles quilt. Slower than my favorite purple pen evaporates. Good thing I took pictures of the overall design.


The marks are mostly to point out which shapes I had planned to put where, not really something to stitch over. I did mark a line to indicate the apex and base line of the smaller inner triangles. I try to do as little marking as possible, using the markings on the rulers and the seam lines to guide me. But sometimes, there's not much to go by, so I definitely do mark.


I'm continuing to break it down into different geometric shapes. Last week I did a hexagon and this week it's time for a large triangle. This triangle is actually one of two overlapping triangles, so there's a part of it I'm not quilting.


I'm really loving using my straight 12 inch ruler for these half inch echoes I'm using to delineate the geometric shapes and then going back and filling in with this little flower fill.

I now mostly quilt in our store, Sew Simple of Lynchburg, and I've realized that I need to do some tweaking of my set up to allow me to quilt better. Most of the machines are set up for shop demos. I keep one set up for free motion quilting most of the time, but hadn't really set it up for my own use. (I'm really hoping we can move the shop in the coming year so I don't have to share studio work space with the sales floor.) I had some issues moving my ruler with my project.


The first issue was quickly identified. Once upon a time Janome had some Supreme Sliders cut to to be used with the extension table that comes with the Janome 8900. I had an extra one in the shop and was using it on the 8200QPCSE set into a Horn cabinet. It's long, but narrow. The slider really needs to be big enough to cover the joins between the insert and the cabinet surface.

It caused my ruler to get stuck or jerk when going over these areas.

Silly me....I preach to y'all about the need to have a good smooth surface to quilt on.

The next issue was found shortly after. It seems the machine had slid to the right a little.....


The arrow above points to where the insert was no longer supported by its own support built into the machine. The lower insert was causing my ruler to rock as I quilted with the ruler to the right of the needle.

Here's my story and I'm sticking to it..... I think that as we gain skill in free motion quilting (and likely other things in life), we can become a little blind to the basics that we paid so much attention to when we first started out.

I know I've got some awfully talented quilters here...have you let things slide in your quilting set up? Or not slide as in this particular case? Especially if you've traveled to a class, retreat, or workshop.

If you are new to free motion quilting, I cannot stress enough how much a good set up with a large smooth, flush to the machine bed, surface is to your quilting.

Going forward I will be putting one of my Sew Slip mats around the foot of this machine and make sure that it's in the proper position. (I will also be praying that the right space opens up for our shop. We need classroom space! But that's not exactly a actionable tip for you!)

Happy quilting!

8 comments:

  1. Thanks for the tips. What a lovely quilting design. Would like to see it finished!

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    1. Thanks! If it takes too long before you see this finished, I give you permission to nag me! :-)

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  2. Hi, Amy, just wanted to let you know that I've tried to subscribe to your mailing list, but keep getting the error message "Too many subscribe attempts for this email address. Please try again in about 5 minutes. (#8821)" (I got this the first time, and again when I tried a different email address...) Diane Nishri

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    1. Hmmm.... no idea why. Email me directly, and I can add you manually amy@amysquiltingadventures.com

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  3. Amy use turtle wax on the insert and you won't need the sew slip mat. I received a new sewing table for Christmas and in the directions it said to wax the insert to make it slick for free motion quilting.

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    1. Kim, I agree wax would be great if my surface wasn't slick, but my issue is actually how the Sew Slip covers joins between machine and insert, and insert to table. Painter's tape could work and I love painters tape, but the Sew Slip or Slider is quicker to take off when I don't want it.

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  4. Amy, I am so happy to see how well your business is going. I seriously need to drive the 2 (?) hours from Winston-Salem to Lynchburg and meet you in person. So glad that you have added fabrics to the shop. And, the fact that you need classroom space is such a good problem!!!! Love the ombre triangle quilt and enjoy watching the quilting develop.

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