Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I haven’t done much ruler work with my Sweet Sixteen, with the exception of straight line work (e.g. stitch in the ditch) using the Line Tamer ruler from Four Paws Quilting. I love this ruler as it has channels to hold the hopping foot in place and so there’s very little that can go wrong — for example, it’s not easy to wander off line if you use it correctly.

However, I initially had a few trials and errors in using it, so this short tutorial shows you how I use it and what to watch for so that you can keep your stitching lines nice and straight.

PLEASE NOTE: This ruler is NOT for use with domestic sewing machines — it is made specifically for mid-arm and long-arm quilting machines and it comes in two sizes, depending on the machine you have.

First, let’s take a look at this ruler (click on a photo to view it larger):

The ruler is 10.5 inches long, with vertical lines laser-etched into the plastic every 0.5 inches. There are two horizontal lines — the top one near the opening is 1.5 inches down from the top, and the bottom one is 1.75 inches from the base of the ruler. On my ruler (suitable for the HQ Sweet Sixteen hopping foot), the half-inch lines near the inner edge of the slot are in effect 0.25 inch vertical lines. There are also some 45 degree lines.

You have several positioning choices when using this ruler:

• place the slot vertical to your body position, then either pull the ruler and quilt towards you, or push it away from you
• place the slot horizontal to your body (i.e. push/pull it to the left or right)
• or some other angle of your choosing.

NOTE: If you are using the open-toe hopping foot, be careful if you’re trying to use the ruler at any angle other than vertical — the sides of the hopping foot need to touch the edges of the slot, and at non-vertical angles, that can be an issue.

If you look closely at the picture above, you’ll see other faint ‘lines’ — this is the cut edge of the ‘ClearGrip’ I have put on the underside of the ruler. ClearGrip helps hold the ruler in place on the quilt. (UPDATE: I now use small squares of Handi Grip on the underside of the ruler — it sticks the ruler to the fabric much better.)

I tend to use the ruler vertically, and slide the slot around the foot so that the open part of the slot is furthest away from me. I then pull the ruler (and quilt) towards me. But that’s me — you’ll need to practice to find out the best position for you.

I also use Machingers quilting gloves when using the ruler as it gives me better grip. In the photo below, you can only see my left hand as I used my right to take the picture! But I’d normally have both hands on the ruler, applying downward pressure with the heels of my hands, thumbs, and forefingers as I move the quilt and ruler towards or away from me. Notice that my third finger (left red arrow) is resting against the edge of the ruler. I do the same with my right third finger, and in this way I can adjust the position of the ruler as smidge if I need to as I’m stitching just by moving those fingers to the left/right as required. I think of this finger control like a horse’s bridle — with a well-trained horse, you only have to adjust the bridle a tad to the left or right to make the horse go where you want it to go. Or, if you’re not familiar with horses, think of power steering in your car — you only need to touch it a tiny amount to make small changes in direction. In the example below, I’d use my right finger to make a tiny leftward adjustment to the ruler so that I didn’t stitch over that point (right red arrow). Actually, I’d normally have made that adjustment a few stitches back. NOTE: In this photo I’m using light coloured thread, so I’d make any adjustments in direction in the light areas of fabric, not in the dark areas where they’d be noticeable.

In the picture below, you can see how I’ve lined up the ruler — the green arrows show the alignment of the centre line with the previous stitching and how the stitches just touch/skim the dark fabric points. The red arrows show another alignment method — placing the laser-etched lines parallel or on the seam lines. Of course, this will only be successful if the elements in the block are perfectly square ;-). Notice the area where the top green arrow is pointing — see how the hopping foot is snug against the edges of the slot? Sometimes, when you move the ruler to the next position, you can end up with it sitting on top of the hopping foot if you’re not watching carefully — if you stitched with it like that, you could damage your hopping foot, the needle, the timing of the machine, and/or the ruler!

The final picture (below) shows how I’ve lined up the stitching line so that it will go exactly in the centre of the slot. I eyeball this, and with some practice have got pretty good at ‘guessing’ where that stitching line will go. Again, the green arrows show the visual cues I use to align those points with the centre of the slot, and the red arrow shows the vertical line parallel to the block.

Takeaways:

• Rulers work best with the machine set to the ‘needle down’ position. If you have to make adjustments, you won’t have jumps in your stitches if you use ‘needle down’.
• You only need to make small adjustments to change direction.
• You need to apply downward and push/pull pressure to move the ruler and quilt under the needle.
• Make sure the hopping foot is snug in the slot before you start stitching.
• Use the laser-etched lines on the ruler as guidelines. You can line them up with seams, with other stitching lines (for an exact echo measurement), or with other elements on the quilt.
• When stitching long lines, you don’t need to stitch the full length of the slot before adjusting the ruler. Stitch as far as you’re comfortable with (this might only be 4 or 6 inches), then stop. Adjust the ruler and start stitching again. With practice, you’ll be able to guide the ruler a smidge with your fingers as you’re stitching, but initially stop, then start again.
• You WILL improve with practice! On my Sweet Sixteen, I can now stitch straight lines at 60-70% speed; when I first started using this ruler, I was going at about 15% speed.

Quilts I’ve stitched using this ruler: https://rhondabracey.com/?s=%22line+tamer%22

I keep looking this up on YouTube, so figured I’d link to it on my blog so I don’t have to remember where to find it 😉

I might sew one of these today…

The main part starts at about 2 minutes in.

Later the same day…

I had a green batik jelly roll I picked up in Bali last September. I have three baby quilts to make, so thought I’d use this technique and that jelly roll for the quilt tops.

Here’s all those strips sewn into one long 1600″ strip:

However, I was disappointed in the final result.

I think there were a couple of reasons — the jelly roll seemed to have a lot of medium and dark fabrics and not many lights, and the technique of just grabbing them off the roll in the order they were in meant that like colours were stitched together giving double strips of the same fabric; even where different fabrics were joined, the contrast wasn’t enough to be noticeable (see picture below where there are two strips that have joins).

Had I realised this earlier, I might have started again and mixed in the pink jelly roll strips with the green (the yellow is to be used for something else) or deliberately picked a light, then medium, then dark, the light again etc. instead of stitching them straight off the roll as per the instructions in the video.

While this took me longer than an hour (probably about two hours), it was a very quick way to make a quilt top. I have enough to make four baby quilt tops, but as I’m not happy with the effect (I just got stripes, not that slashing effect that you see in the video), I may well use what I made as the backs for the baby quilts. And as I’ve sewn and cut down the finished top to about 25″ wide, I’ll use one of the clever techniques for backs that Elizabeth Hartman shares on her free Craftsy lesson to make the backs a bit bigger: http://www.craftsy.com/class/creative-quilt-backs/117

I was glad I tried this technique and would use it again, but next time I’ll be more careful about the fabric contrasts in the jelly roll and perhaps pick and choose what fabric goes with what, instead of just doing them in the order they are on the roll.

Update: There’s a new Jelly Roll Race video, showing how to add little squares between the ends of each jelly roll strip:

I bought my Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen just under two years ago. With it came a bobbin winder, which my dealer showed me how to use. The instructions that came with the machine were next to useless…

So here are some instructions for THIS bobbin winder (see picture below). I believe Handi Quilter now supplies a different style bobbin winder with the Sweet Sixteen, so only use these instructions if your bobbin winder is made by cuTex and looks like this:

How to thread the cuTex bobbin winder

See the diagram below for the thread path; you can thread either side of the bobbin winder, just don’t cross thread over from one side to the other.

1. Pull the thread off the spool and up and through the thread mast.
2. Poke the end of the thread into the little hole above the tension knob (circled in yellow in the photo above).
3. Pull the thread you’ve just poked through the hole back towards the spool and ‘floss’ it between the tension disks (the silver part of the tension knob area)
4. Pull the thread towards the silver spindle (far left in photo above — NOTE: there is no bobbin on this spindle). If you have a bobbin with a slot, poke the thread through the slot, then push the bobbin onto the spindle. If you don’t have a slot on the bobbin, wind the thread around the bobbin several times before pushing it on the spindle – it needs to have a decent grip so the rest of the thread can ‘catch’ on it when you switch the bobbin winder on.
5. Press the On switch.
6. Adjust the timer (how much time will depend on how thick the thread is – I tend to have mine set between 9 and 15, but thicker threads will require less as they fill up quicker). You can always restart if the timer stops before the bobbin is full.
7. Press the Start button and make sure the thread ‘catches’ on the bobbin and starts to fill.
8. Use your fingers or the back of your hand to feel the tension of the thread coming from the tension disk to the bobbin – it shouldn’t be too tight, but equally it shouldn’t be totally slack either. There should be some ‘bounce’ in the thread tension. If the tension is too tight or loose, turn the tension knob – retest the ‘bounce’ and adjust the tension as required.
9. Do NOT overfill the bobbin – only fill it to about 80% full, not all the way. If you overfill the bobbin, it will not work correctly in your machine.
10. Turn the bobbin winder off when you’ve finished, cut the thread near the full bobbin, and remove the bobbin — sometimes the bobbin will be quite tight, so you may need to use a bit of brute force to get it off!

As I tend to use similar weight threads for my bobbins, I only need to tweak the tension a little every so often; otherwise, it’s set and forget.

Other hints:

• I use the back metal holder on the bobbin winder for some of my spare bobbins — it holds about six (see the top photo).
•  To stop thread from spooling off the bobbin once it’s wound, I wrap it was a child’s ponytail elastic (see picture below) — I can get a pack of 20 or so from the supermarket for just a few dollars.
• I keep my already-wound bobbins in a zip-lock bag suspended by a ribbon from the unused thread mast on my Sweet Sixteen — I find it’s easier to keep them there as they are only an arm’s length away (see picture below). Unfortunately, the metal spool holders on the Sweet Sixteen are just a tad too thick for the bobbins — I wonder if they’ll change that in a future design? So many thread spools have different thicknesses in their central cores, I’m surprised HQ didn’t just go for a versatile spool holder thickness that would suit thread spools AND M-size bobbins.

And yes, my Bling Bear (a present from my friend Glenys) watches over me while I quilt 😉