Welcome back to another Frame Quilting Friday! Last week I shared a tricky basting experience as I shifted a partially quilted quilt from my home machine to the longarm. Learn how I continued the ruler quilting design seamlessly on my longarm and finished the center of this baby quilt fast!
Quick links to the tools and supplies shown in this quilting video:
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Ruler Foot Quilting Complexity
I admit this ruler foot quilting design is a lot more complex than I anticipated. When I first began quilting this baby quilt on my home machine, I was just making it up as I went along. The downside with quilting without a set plan is it’s easy to make the design more intricate than you intended.
I started by echo ditching around the nine patch blocks with the Slice quilting ruler and then quilted a series of straight lines to connect with another block. This created some nice angular texture, but left some open spaces in the background.
I filled in those areas with some soft curves stitched with the Mini Slide ruler. At this stage I could tell this design was going to be pretty time consuming to continue on my home machine so I folded it up to finish another day.
Shifting this baby quilt to the longarm was the best choice. I was able to see the design clearly and able to quilt it more quickly by moving the machine and using the rulers as a guide. I did have to break thread a few times, but for the most part I used travel stitching to move from one area of the quilt to another.
Once I finished quilting around the nine patch blocks, I used the Super Slide Ruler to add soft curving lines between the blocks. All told it only took another four hours of quilting to finish up the center of this baby quilt.
Again, this was a pretty complex design for a baby quilt and in retrospect, I probably wouldn’t do this again unless the quilt was very special. No, you don’t need to quilt your baby quilts to death and back. A simple All Over quilting design is a great choice for baby quilts, and they’re a lot faster to finish too!
Now I just have to quilt the borders and this baby quilt will be complete! I’ve been wanting to quilt some free hand feathers and this seems like the perfect area to practice. Make sure to check out next week's tutorial to see how I quilt the borders with feathers!
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Let's go quilt,
Leah Day
2 comments
Hi Patricia – Great question! Yes, if you can make it to an AQS show, there’s a good chance there will be a dealer or Grace Company will be there to demo. It might be worth it to drive 2 hours to a local store that has the machines set up. Check in your area and on GraceFrames.com to see where the closest dealer is located.
Hi Leah, I know your so busy, I have a question about your long arm Qnique. I want to purchase probably this time next year, I have that much of a window until the funds are available. I want to try one out first though. No body or store has one close within two hr. drive. Do I need to go to something like Quilt festival like at AQS to do that? I so want to try one. I’m sorry I’m putting this on you, If you don’t know, just give me a ???, I will understand