Patsy Thompson's Ruler Class

Hi all -

The only quilting thing I've been working on so far this year is Patsy Thompson's ruler class. In the month of January, Patsy shared a free ruler class every Monday and Friday on her blog. A good friend of mine turned me onto the class (I never remember to check people's blogs that don't have email reminders so, even though I love her, Patsy's blog fell off my radar and I haven't looked at it for a year or so). Since I love Patsy's stuff and I wanted to do some more playing with rulers, I decided to do the class.

Before getting into the details of the class, I want to apologize for the pictures. I had a tough time getting pictures with reasonable colors. Part of the problem was the time of year and part of the problem was the difficult colors I chose for my class samples. I hope you can still see the stitching, which is the important part!

The first couple of lessons were simple exercises just to get used to using and lining up rulers. I already felt comfortable with these simple tasks, but I decided that I would faithfully do all of the exercises. The first lesson had us using a straight ruler to make some "arches" using lines that radiate out from a single point:

Then she suggested we practice filling in some of the channels, but only do it on two of the arches so we could see what a difference it makes:

In the second lesson, we did some more straight line arches, but this time the lines were parallel rather than radiating from a single point:

Again, we filled in some of the channels:

In the third lesson, we started doing the same, but using curved rulers:

And again in the fourth lesson:

And in the fifth lesson:

These were the base lessons. I have done enough ruler work that these lessons weren't that useful to me, so I concentrated more on playing with the fills. But this was an opportunity to try using the HandiQuilter gripper tape on my rulers and I have to say that it completely makes the difference for me! With the gripper tape, there is absolutely no slipping of the ruler so I can concentrate on keeping the ruler foot flush against the ruler and get nice, smooth lines.

The sixth lesson didn't have any quilting in it. Instead, it talked about how to space your motifs on a border. I already know how to do that from border stencils and things like that so I really only skimmed this lesson.

The seventh lesson is where things got really interesting. In this lesson, we started putting everything together into a little project. This is what I'd been waiting for. I wanted to dig in and do some beautiful Patsy Thompson quilting! We started by preparing our sandwich. Her instructions had you cut the sandwich exactly to her finished size and then make the markings. I've always found that it's better to cut the sandwich larger than the desired finished size and then make the markings with that finished size in mind, so that's what I did instead. That just give you some wiggle room to take care of mistakes and unexpected problems. I also decided to play with some different colors from what Patsy does and chose this shot cotton for my background. It is black threads in one direction and gold threads in the other. You always start with registration lines:

Then you quilt the frame using your rulers. I decided to do the ruler work in black to match those thread in the shot cotton. (Patsy had done the center lines in a different color of thread so I did the same thing.)

Then I played with different thread colors while filling in the areas. I used the same quilting motifs as Patsy so I could practice her stuff.

My colors are a bit subtle on the gold background, but they also kind of glow and I really like them. I'm not so pleased with the black ruler lines, but once you make a decision, you sometimes just have to stick with it. This piece wasn't important enough to unstitch or to start over.

In the eighth lesson, we continued to build outwards. We started with more ruler framework:

And added some more fill-in quilting:

In the ninth and final lesson, we added a border to our little quilt. As you probably guessed, we started with the ruler work:

And then filled in with other quilting:

Overall, I thought this class was useful and a lot of fun! And I really like my "finished" project. As mentioned above, the only part I don't like is the black thread in the ruler work. If I were to do this over again, I would probably go with a medium to dark gray for that part. Now I just have to decide what to do with it! I'm not sure if I want to make it into a wallhanging or a tote bag or use it in some other way. For now, it'll just sit aside and marinate.

Nancy