Quilting with Rulers: Celtic Flower

I am so happy that I was able to get more quilting done on this fun practice piece. I put a circle in the middle of the design and tried to McTavish inside of it.

I haven't finished the McTavishing inside the flower petal areas around the Celtic Knot, but it felt like I was losing the Impact of these shapes with the narrow 1/4 inch echo. So I went around the outside at a 1/2 inch.

I marked the line at each inner turn so I could turn the corner more evenly. With the way that the CK and these petal shapes line up, it was easy and fast to come back in and mark.

 Here's what I've got so far. I'm not liking the dense stitching in the petals. I wish I had stuck to my original plan of using a 1/2 inch crosshatch in them. But the fills were a good place to see how this thread showed up on the fabric.

This is WonderFil's Mirage, a 30 wt. thread and it's stitching up so very nice. No tension or shredding issues at all. I'm using a 90/14 needle with it. The only thing I don't like is the unexpected appearance of the black color in between the blue and green colors in the variegation.

Gotta run! I hope you've been doing some free motion quilting fun, hopefully with a ruler.

Quilting With Rulers: From the Center Out

Today I got home from a busy day of work at the sewing machine shop and decided I would actually quilt. So after homework with the kiddos, hubby volunteered to cook. Yes, I am a very lucky lady. I've been doing a lot of non-quilting work lately and it's really dragging me down. Just a confluence of events and bad timing, it'll get better. But I felt like I just needed to do some fun quilting.

I wanted to explore some newer rulers and played with a quilting design that radiated from a center point. I started with the 6 inch Celtic Knot ruler and made two full designs with it, overlapping on top of each other for a floral effect.

Then I got out another ruler that I've been needing to play with as I plan on carrying it in the shop. It's the Circles on Quilts Template. I really like the premise of it as it was designed with those who quilt on sewing machines or other stationary machines in mind and makes sewing large circles pretty easy. (I don't have it listed yet, but it should be available February 8 or sooner.)

 I'm not a big fan of the thumbtack pin that this Westalee template uses, but it's still a pretty great template.

Then I reinserted the anchor post from the Celtic Knot template and got out another ruler made by the same company. This is the Fan Ruler and unlike the other TopAnchor templates, It's made for marking large circles instead of being used to actually quilt.

I marked a large circle around the other circle, several inches larger than the other ruler and then went back and marked reference lines that corresponded to the points on the Celtic Knot. I've had this ruler for quite some time and this was the first time I really plated with it and it really allowed me to add to the complexity of this design without really being all that complex or difficult. Why didn't I do this sooner?!

Then I went around the circles, connecting points with the QP #8 to make more petal-like shapes similar to that of the Celtic Knot. These radiate out from the circle and look pretty darn cool.

That's where I'm stopping for now, but I'll be adding some free motion quilting and then I'll post my progress later this week. It was a lot of fun.

Don't forget February 9th I'll be hosting a linky party so we can all show how we've been quilting with rulers on our home machines, domestic machines, or sit down long arm machines. Get your projects and posts ready!

Celtic Knot Templates

I've been meaning to write about this new set of templates for a while but just hadn't the time to do them justice. I used a prototype in my Craftsy class "Quilting with Rulers on a Home Machine" (50% off link!) to demonstrate rotating templates and used the same template without the rotating pin for a whole block design as well.

The above is pretty cool, but using the rotating feature is even more cool! And you can offset the designs, and nest them within each other too! I really like these anchor pins, they don't have pins poking up where I'm guaranteed to poke myself.

This template is a lot like a big half circle, but has a hole drilled for a special rotating pin and feet at the ends of the curve to stop your stitching. Add in some handy markings and it allows you to make a great Celtic Knot design without math or marking.

There's a whole range of sizes: 12, 9, 6, and a 'pin-less' 3 inch template. The 3 inch template is cute. What is it that makes something so adorable when miniaturized? It still makes a Celtic Knot if you use the markings, but the template is too small for the special anchor post and pin.

I had to use a ruler to mark reference points so I could line up this little cutie within the knot design made by the 9 and 12 inch versions.

Then I used the markings for the template placement. There are metallic gold lines to help with the center and point placement. They show up really well under the lights of the sewing machine!

As I stitched, I used the green lines to reposition the template for the next pass of stitching. Without the anchor pin, I did need to be extra careful that the ruler didn't slip.

I mentioned that I used a prototype in my quilting with rulers class and I was able to suggest that 1/4 inch spacing lines should be marked around the edges of the template for greater usability when using the half circle or straight edge for other designs.  This makes the template really versatile and each size makes a precise half circle in that size. It's really awesome when a manufacturer listens to input on their products.

I'm now selling these Celtic Knot designs in my shop.