Free Motion Monday Quilting Adventure: Ruler Work- Week 4

It's the last post of my ruler work series! I love ruler work when free motion quilting- the contrast between lines and curvier free motion designs like swirls or feathers is just fabulous. It's safe to say that posts here will continue to feature the technique. I hope you've learned from this month's series and will continue to use ruler work in your quilts.

I started a new customer quilt this weekend and am using continuous curves on the center panel of hexies. Continuous curves this small are a bit fiddly and can also be done without a ruler, but the result isn't usually as uniform as with a ruler.

Freehand continuous curves can be treated much like a grid-based design and that is the focus of next month's Monday series. This seems like a good transition, don't you think?

As I say in the video, I'm not too thrilled with this ruler set I used. I had recently bought them (nested ovals) but I could have sworn I had ordered nested circles. I don't like the nested idea. I think I'd rather have separate circles. You have to tape the nested ones together to have enough to grasp with your hand. To top it all off, the edges were very rough, in some places they were downright sharp and snaggy. It pays to get quality rulers.

Trying out my rulers for the right size.

But I needed something smaller than the smallest semicircle I had in my set from Accents in Design. A one or one and a half inch circle would have been ideal.

That's about all I have for this week, except to announce our winner of the Continuous Curve ruler set from Accents in Design!

Jasmine, who blogs over at Quilt Kisses is our lucky winner! I'll be sending her information in to Carol this week to get her rulers on their way.

Next month there will be a new giveaway as we work on grid-based designs together.

This is the last week to link up for ruler work and I am hoping some more of you have been giving this technique a try. Doesn't need to be fancy, but we want to see what folks are doing with rulers and free motion quilting! Though fancy is good too!

If you've missed any of the Free Motion Monday posts, you can find them on the Free Motion Mondays page.

Here's the guidelines for the link party:

For the linky this week, link up a post of  ruler work you've done, if any. If you haven't done any, feel free to use a ruler to draw out any line based designs that you'd like to explore. You can use rotary cutting rulers for drawing. If you've written a post about wanting to do these types of designs, you can post that too!

Some quick rules:

• Keep your post relevant to this quilt along please. Spammy posts will be deleted.
• Make sure you link up to the individual post, not your home page as nobody wants to have to search around for the post if they're a little late to the party.
• Reciprocate! Link back to this post somewhere in your post. You've got to dance with the one who took you to the party, so make sure you link back.
• Don't be a wall-flower. (Talking to myself here too. In person I am so stinking shy!) Visit the other links, be sociable, and leave comments.
• Please make sure you leave me a way to contact you if you are a no-reply commenter, especially if you ask a question.

Don't forget to bookmark this blog, follow, or sign it up in your favorite feed reader. Like the facebook page (I do post some short things on it pretty regularly), or even check out my Pinterest boards, which includes one devoted to examples of ruler work.  I'll be visiting you too!

Today is Memorial Day in the USA; remember the fallen, those who have served and those who are still serving in our armed forces.

I'm linking this up with Hexie Weekend as suggested by Angie (A Nudge).

Quilting Rainy Days and Mondays

I've been working on this quilt for a while, made from Riley Blake's Rainy Days and Mondays line of fabrics plus a little from the stash. It's 76x 76 with a Quilter's Dream 70/30 batting and a generous untrimmed perimeter, so more like 86x86. So it's pretty bulky and dense. Also I'm quilting it for very utilitarian use, so it's not very fun. Not complete drudgery, but I love getting wild with the free motion quilting.

 I had planned to use my ruler foot and a curved ruler to do some continuous curves, but with the bulk of the quilt, I decided that would take too long. So I'm doing these twists, based loosely on the free-hand version of "Terry's Twists" in the small squares. And in the large squares I am quilting a large umbrella.

 

I'm thinking these QD poly batts are just too dense for what I like to do. I normally like poly (80/20) for the puff it gives my quilting, but their poly is different than most. It is fabulous under a wool batt for faux trapunto work though!

I've been telling myself that I must finish this quilt before I can really start on my Poured Out v.2 quilt, but other projects keep skipping into the line. A dress for my daughter, some baby shoes for the neighbor and my shop, some really fun and easy Kanazashi flowers, and I wonder if I'll ever get things done. Better than having nothing to do I suppose.

I keep feeling like I need to do some stitching in the ditch, but I keep telling myself that if this quilt was getting an edge to edge panto or other e2e design on a long arm it would not be stitched in the ditch. And I want it to be cuddly. It's gonna live on the couch.