Rulers and Templates

I was working on a block for my quilt guild's mystery pattern of the month for a small group called Pieces of Blue and I needed my large square ruler to square up the block to 12½". I was looking right at my 4½", my 6½", and my 9½" square Omnigrid™rulers and I knew I had larger sizes. I did finally locate my 12½" x 12½" Omnigrid™ Ruler and squared up my blocks from January and February.

The ruler had been stashed away in one of the long drawers in my cutting table ... somewhere amidst the chaos of a huge accumulation of specialty rulers – some useful, some not-so-useful, some still awaiting their potential-usefulness to be tested. I emptied those two drawers in search of my 12½" x 12½" and made a huge mess. Oh, well, since the coronavirus COVID-19 has me staying at home and social distancing, this is my golden opportunity to clean out yet another drawer, shelf, closet, box, etc. It is also a time for retrospection and evaluation of the clunkers or star performers among my tools of the trade.

I spread out my collection on my cutting table surface and sewing machine cabinet, consolidating the rulers near the sewing machine. I would later group them by type and evaluate them. Then I stared with dismay at the random stuff left over on the cutting mat. My first step was to remove the obvious from the cutting mat pile. That set of yellow nested star templates at the upper left – purchased at a quilt show for a great bargain price I am sure – was a loser that had to go. It is intended for use in longarm quilting but mine is a sit down machine, a Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen, and I have learned that only the smaller rulers and templates, those that are within the span of my hand, will work for me. It is difficult to hold a large ruler fixed against the quilt sandwich while moving the fabric-ruler combination under the stationary quilting head. I will give this to a guild member with a longarm where the quilt is mounted on rollers and the quilting head moves. What was a clunker for me may be a star performer for her. I suppose I could keep the smaller stars but why break up the set?

See all those used Ziploc™ bags on the upper right? They were stuffed all over the place within that drawer. They were no longer of a quality to be used for food and yet how can something so useful be tossed? Waste not, want not. They will need to be sorted by size and tidied. That rolled up appliqué pressing sheet in the bottom middle I  moved to be with appliqué supplies and closer to the ironing board. I am not a fan of appliqué and so have had  little opportunity to use it – but I plan to. I moved the cutting mat cleaner beneath the appliqué pressing sheet to a drawer of smaller notions where I will see it more often. I have never used it. Maybe if I see it more often I will be inspired to clean my cutting mat.

Those Perfect Patchwork Templates I moved to be with the rulers. Now to the rulers and templates pile near the sewing machine. I divided these into categories: Wedge Rulers, Triangle Rulers, Fancy Angles, Curved Rulers, Other Shapes, Templates, Trimming Rulers. Do I really need all these? No. Do I really want all these? Maybe, maybe not. Where I have made a project using them I have put a link or photo.

Wedge Rulers

Marilyn Doheny rulers are in the black and white packaging and Phillips Fiber Art rulers are in the blue packaging. All of these I have used to make projects whose pictures follow.

• 9° wedge 11/14/2011 Spiral Thanksgiving table runner
• 10° wedge 01/13/2012 Turquoise and Grey table runner  
• 10° wedge 12/28/2016 Vineyard Furrows wall hanging 
• 45° kaleidoscope ruler (no link, pre-blogging) Baby Quilt from 2004

Triangle Rulers

These rulers can aid in making hexagons or help in cutting setting triangles to set a quilt on point. I have never set a quilt on point but if I ever do I have the handy dandy tool to do it. 

• random triangle on upper left - never used and markings are too busy to figure out how to use it
• Fons & Porter 60° pyramid on upper right - used to make hexagon Mask Quilt 10/19/2011
• Fons & Porter Easy Diagonal Sets Ruler in lower center - ya never know when you'll need it 

Mask Quilt 10/19/2011

Later, I discovered that I also had a huge 20½" x 20½" Omnigrid™ Ruler squirreled safely away in the adjacent closet, on a high up shelf, overhanging due to its big size. That is a big thing to misplace. I think the markings on it would work well to make corner setting triangles and that the Fons & Porter Easy Diagonal Sets Ruler could be obsolete.

Fancy Angles

Here are six different rulers to help with cutting angles. I have used none of them. None. Although, the Omnigrids OmniAngle may have been useful in my Grinch quilt with its cattywampus Seussian block placement. As for the others, I will read or watch the instructions and  re-evaluate their value - other than probably a good price at a show - and decide to try them out or donate. The first three are

• Omnigrid™ OmniAngle - perhaps would have been useful for Grinch quilt 11/26/2011
• That Patchwork Place 8" Bias Square - definitely a giveaway - see instructions
• That Patchwork Place ScrapSaver - looks promising - see instructions below

Grinch quilt 11/26/2011

Instruction for 8" Bias Square

Instructions for  ScrapSaver

I have never used the next three

• Easy Twist by Terry E. Vogels - may have been useful on that Grinch quilt 11/26/2011
• Lazy Angle by Joan Hawley YouTube instructions - looks strikingly like the upcoming Hex N More ruler, which I have used, so I can maybe let this one go
• Feathered Star Ruler by Marsha McCloskey YouTube Instructions

Curved Rulers

Ok. I have used none of these. But I intend to!

• OmniArc
• Quick Curve by Sew Kind of Wonderful
• Ovals All Ways

Potential Blue Onion pattern for Ovals All Ways

Other shape rulers

• Hex N More from Jaybird Quilts - used one aspect for Whirligiggles quilt
• Super Sidekick from Jaybird Quilts - have not used but surprising similar to Lazy Angle - Jaybird quilts has many exciting patterns that interest me
• Clammies - excited to try this one with some of my fat quarter collections

Whirligiggles quilt 2/17/16 and Whirligiggles completion 3/23/20 

Templates for cutting out

Guilty again. I have used none of these. But I intend to!

• Storm at Sea by Perfect Patchwork - definitely try out this one. I want to make my own Storm at Sea since I made one from a precut laser die kit of batiks and loved it. So did my daughter. She now has it.
• Spiky by Perfect Patchwork - doubt if I will ever make these specialty blocks so I will procrastinate making a decision on this ruler
• Japanese Jigsaw by Tracey Brookshier - this would look stunning in batiks but where would I hang it?

Trimming Rulers

• BlocLoc  - I used the flying geese one in a Patchwork Math Workshop and found it useful enough to buy it in other sizes and shapes. Those half rectangles are simplified with this tool.
• Precision Trimmer 6™- I was introduced to this in a workshop making my Sunny Spring Frost Quilt (7/24/13)  and I was hooked. I used it often and have it in the smaller Precision Trimmer 3™size as well

Sunny Spring Frost block

I have another category of rulers, all those rectangular ones from Omnigrid that are the workhorses of cutting out. The sizes I own are 8½"x 24", 6"x 24", 3½"x 24",  8½"x 12", 6"x 12", 3"x 18", 4"x 14". The yellow ones are slippery on both sides but the green has a rubberized non-slip backing. I accumulate these because every time JoAnn's Fabric has a 50% off coupon and the rulers are not on sale and therefore ineligible, I add to my ruler stash.

I dropped and broke the corner off the one I use the most, the 8½"x 24"... bummer! I am not sure if it is the size or the backing that makes it my favorite. 

But enough of getting sidetracked. My memory is refreshed, I am inspired for future creations and my ruler drawer is much tidier. Linking up now with Cooking Up Quilts' Main Crush Monday #170 and getting back to sewing pillowcases.

Whirligiggles Completion

In my previous post on 3/19/20 I explained how long this quilt, Whirligiggles, has been in the making – four years and fourteen posts. This post is number 14. The post for 2/22/17 explains my name choice as follows:

The grey and white neutral pinwheels make me think of a whirligig so the term is appropriate. But why the giggles? The brightly colored stripes, checks, swirls, polka dots, and squiggles fabrics that I chose for the star hexagons are frivolous enough they make me giggle. Hence Whirligiggles.

Now that it is finally completed and ready for deployment in my living room I truly can giggle. For a while there I recall I was cussing more than giggling. Being restricted to home because of social distancing due to the coronavirus was the final incentive. I am fortunate to not be ill. It took me a couple days to make the grosgrain labels and put on the two-tone ¼" thin binding. Here is a sneak peak at one corner of the completed quilt and what follows is my process of the final few steps I went through to get to the finish line.

At first I could not find the right color grosgrain ribbon in my stash for the name and date labels which were to go on the grey backing of the quilt, yet I was convinced that I must have basic white somewhere. My grosgrain ribbon stash was scattered in several containers and not wound neatly so I took the time to consolidate and organize it all. Guess what I found? I uncovered a piece of white grosgrain ribbon long enough for two labels, with extra inches for a spare which I goofed and cut too short! As a bonus I now have nice tidy ribbon selection. Small lengths are coiled and secured with scotch tape then gathered in the ziplock bag that will go in one of the train cases. I now have all my quilt label options gathered together and separated from the narrow grosgrain ribbons I use for Christmas ornament hanging loops. Cleaning up messes previous ignored or put off is one of the perks of staying at home more. However, just because I am home more does not mean I am less distracted from the project at hand but hey, the side effects are a plus.

Here are the labels before being secured under the binding. The placement of these labels deviates from my norm since this quilt has two zigzag edges and no right angle corners to place the label. I spanned one of the points at either end of the bottom zigzag edge for each label. 

Since Whirligiggles has no sashing border, I needed a narrow binding to cover only the edge seam allowances and avoid chopping off the points of pinwheels and stars. Also, since the perimeter of this quilt was over 7½ yards, I did not want to stitch the binding to the back side by hand. I used Susie's Magic Binding approach – so I could machine stitch in the ditch of the lime green flange – changing the dimensions to be narrower. My calculations showed that I needed to cut the dark blue 1" wide and the lime green 1¼" wide so when joined along their length with a ¼" seam they would result in a 1¾" wide strip. For French double thickness ¼" binding, this calculation checks: 6 x ¼" binding + 2 x ⅛" flange strip.  To be certain that theory worked in practice, I sewed a small section along a practice sandwich. It worked. Using a stitch in the ditch specialty pressure foot also helped immensely to keep me in that groove between the lime green and dark blue.

The labels once attached and captured beneath the binding look like this. The two corners of the quilt are folded back to be next to each other in the photo so I can show both labels at the same time and the backing fabric. It was challenging for me with the narrow binding width and the 60° in-and-out angles. The non-right angles were a new skill for me but I just took my time attaching that skinny binding, taking frequent breaks, using an awl to hold the corner folds in place and inching along. I did not succeed 100% at keeping on lime green flange of the binding, but I would still give myself a grade of A.

A bound zigzag edge and a bound straight edge of the quilt are shown in the next two photos.

My husband is holding Whirligiggles outdoors in our back yard, showing both the front and the back. The finished dimensions are 74" tall by 56" wide. I am fortunate my husband is over 6 ft tall and has a wide arm span.

Here are closeups of the front and the back.

Finally! Whirligiggles is on the wing chair in my living room. I am linking up to Cooking Up Quilts's Main Crush Monday #169 to share my finish.

White-on-grey & Grey-on-white

My first post on this quilt, working name presently Whirligiggles, was 1/23/16 where I began it in a class taught by Sandy Klop. A single triangle piece and Y-seams make up a hexagon and secondary star pattern by judicious color placement. The subjects of posts dated 1/27/16, 2/17/16, 2/15/17, 2/22/17, 2/28/17, 3/7/17, and 11/23/17 were assembly, color arranging, and prep for FMQ. My most recent posts were on 8/23/19, 9/5/19, 9/8/19, and 9/9/19 in which I discussed FMQ of the red/blue/green star blocks. The white and grey hexagons still needed FMQ and so I have resurrected this quilt again six months later. The white/grey FMQ is th topic of this post. I am bound and determined to finish Whirligiggles in 2020. Some projects hang around so long that their appeal fades. Twelve posts on one quilt - so far- is excessive, even for me. (This post is number thirteen.) Initial enthusiasm has given way to the irked goal of just finishing the @#$%^ thing.

From the previous photo I counted sixteen full-whirligigs in the central area and four ⅔-whirligigs on the top and bottom edges; half have gray blades with a white background and half have white blades with a gray background. I contemplated for quite a while on the FMQ pattern. My goal was to project a sense of rotation and to try to avoid stitching in the lumpy intersection of many seams. My points from piecing met precisely but no matter how much attention I paid to pressing direction, or how hard I steamed them, I could not flatten those bumps. I printed photos of typical hexagons and slid them in plastic page protectors. Using dry erase markers I tried out different patterns. This first pair did, to a small degree, convey rotation like air streams flowing from the rear edges of the blades. The one on the left seemed too angular but I did like the small loops within the gray blades. The one on the right had more rounded shapes but seemed very busy. If that was air flow at the pointed rear edge of the blades, it was extremely turbulent.

In the next pair, I kept with softer, less angular shapes. On the left I tried out arches or single bracket type loops in the background and a few spirals or loops in the blades themselves. It did not appeal. On the right I tried parallel lines or lazy-L loops in the blades and single bracket type loops in the background. I liked the loop combination.

I then laid the sheet protector over a full size block and practiced the pattern. I was comfortable with lazy-L loops, but those bracket-type loops were difficult for me to execute. I decided that they were a variation of my own that I would refer to as lopsided loops and convince myself they were "organic" and "endearing". In a matching thread color their imperfect design feature would not be so noticeable. A rule of thumb I had heard was that the areas of the quilt intended to be emphasized and stand out should be quilted less densely and those intended to recede, like a background for example, should be quilted more densely. That was not the case in the patterns I chose. It was actually the opposite of that which would cause the blades to be dominant. But I attempted to compensate with color.

I used contrasting grey thread on the white bladed hexagons. It was prominent on the white blades and blended into the gray of the background. That is a good thing since my lopsided loops are not too skillfully implemented. Maybe I will get better by the reverse colored hexagons.  This photo is of one of the white-bladed ⅔-whirligigs, still under the foot of my Sweet Sixteen Handi Quilter.

On the grey blades with white background I used white thread. The white does not stand out as much on the grey blades which is unfortunate, especially since I thought I did a good job with those lazy-L loops. My lopsided loops on the white background, which I thought would blend in, stand out more than the Lazy-L loops in the blades. I kept trying to find registration points on which I could focus to orient and size the loops. I did improve with practice but not to the extent I would have liked. I worked around the whirligig in a clockwise fashion FMQing a blade triangle and then FMQing two background triangles.

The two hexagon variations are shown in the next photo. Notice one spins clockwise and the other spins counter clockwise. I found I could quilt the lazy-L loops in either direction with equal dexterity but one direction of the lopsided loops was usually more lopsided in my execution. Nothing much shows up on grey. That should be my takeaway from this quilt. I should make all future quilts in grey and shades of grey since that way I do not need to fret over my invisible FMQ patterns.

The title of this post is White-on-grey & Grey-on-white. The American English spelling is grey. The British English spelling is grey. Both are correct but for some reason the grey spelling looks better to me and it is what flows naturally off my American fingertips as I type. The post title reminded me of a joke.

An adventurer was out in the jungle when he came upon Tarzan. He was painting white stripes on black zebras and black stripes on white zebras. Although curious, the explorer returned home. A year later he came back. Again he finds Tarzan in the jungle. He’s painting white stripes on black zebras and black stripes on white zebras. Every year the explorer returns and every year it is the same scene. Finally he grabs Tarzan and says: “every time I come here you are painting white stripes on black zebras, black stripes on white zebras...What does it mean???”
“Well,” he said “Tarzan stripes forever.” 🇺🇸

The next photo shows my FMQ on the white/grey hexagons and my FMQ on the red/blue/green stars. Hardly shows up, right? I certainly do need to stop agonizing so much over this FMQ stuff since its visibility, or lack thereof, is hardly worth the worry. FMQ is finished. Yay! Next step is my label and binding. Ah, yes... yet another post. Maybe number fourteen will be my final.