Dusty's rulers

When I was in Houston I bought two sets of rulers from Dusty and folks asked if I would put up a review of them when I had tried them. I have now, so here goes.

Firstly the cute packaging is also useful. I can hang the bags from their drawstrings and keep a whole set on one hook, neat. I am also using them for storing my cunning pin catchers but more on those another day.

The set I have spent most time with are the radical rulers. Their first outing was a baby quilt for a regular customer. She doesn't mind if I play and a baby won't critique my quilting. I used the 4 way cross shaped ruler to do the borders, with the gothic arch look. It wasn't perfect, I don't use rulers much so that is to be expected but it was acceptable. If you look on you tube you will find some video of him demonstrating them and the border I tried was one he shows.

I did find the ruler a lot easier to hold than most I've tried. It's a really good size, big enough to be usefull small enough to he held stable easily. I then had to quilt Tet's Christmas present to his mum. It has a lot of applique on it that had to be stitched around. I grabbed my trusty straight ruler and the went hunting for something to use on the curves. Three of the radical rulers got pressed into service. The two arches and the 4 way. Between them they had something close to every arc I needed and were all easy to hold. It wasn't what they were designed for, but they are very very good at it. So much so I've done tons of stitch in the ditch (something I normally won't do) on two sampler quilts as well.

I still need more time to play with the rulers and the other set I bought, but so far I am a very happy camper. These have changed the way I look at ruler work completely. I've also started using my leader grip side clamps. They are much easier to open and close than I had expected, which is good and I love the way the hold the backing. The leader grips for loading quilts are waiting to go on the new frame when it arrives, which will be a while yet because I wanted it customising. I know, typical, but hey if you are going to spend that much you might as well get it right.

Cow on the frame

As you can see I am making good progress with the cow now. Yes this does mean the tracing is all done. I am so relieved, it was getting really boring. The cow has been about for nearly a year without quilting. It is one of the samples for my art quilts 3 class and is based on the photos I took for Herd Mentality. It is quilted very differently from Herd Mentality, and is also acting as a test for my next quilt. Fur goes much faster than I expected and is a lot of fun to quilt.

What's on the frame?

Well, two things actually. I know that's a bit odd bit when I need a long table I lay a piece of polystyrene on the rollers. At the moment I am using that to trace a pattern. The picture shows part of round 1, I'm on round 2 now, and for this project there will be a round 3, though 2 and 3 are only partial tracings so it's not as bad as it sounds.

Actually mounted on the frame I have my cow head sample quilt. I finally got fed up with the pins at a time when the frame was free so the pins are out and the stitching is going on. I made it from the exact requirements I give students which meant the backing was too small to mount so I mounted heavy weight washaway instead. I am not enjoying quilting a quilt with a lot of layers of fabric and the thick washaway front and back. I won't be making a habit of this.

Quilt finished

No I haven't been taking time off from quilting over the holiday. Did you really think I would? Yesterday I finished off a customer quilt the loaded this little one. It's a sample for one of my patterns so I will show you it when the patter comes out, but for now I can at least show you the back. It's not the most exciting quilting in the world. It needed to be quick and easy and done.

Loving having access to my blog again.

Am I back?

Hopefully this new phone will let me start blogging again. I can't get the new blogger software to do what I want and my handset got too old and shaky to deal with email or web access. So for my present to myself I got a replacement handset. 2 days to get things synced and I seem to be back up and running.

The quilt is a sample for a pattern. It's just keeping me out of trouble until I can start on a new art quilt. Just waiting to get the new printer up and running.