A new quilt project to practice ruler quilting
I’ve been working on a new project lately, and it’s finally time to share it with you. A new quilt to practice quilting with rulers together!
This quilt consists of nine Polaroid photos, nine perfect spaces to quilt. Are you ready to practice your ruler quilting?
Picture Perfect QAL
The name of this QAL comes with a wink.
Perfection is not at all what we’re aiming for when learning to quilt new quilt patterns. Maybe you’ve never quilted with rulers before. Maybe this will even be your very first quilt. In that case, the focus should be on fun rather than perfection.
Quilting is handwork. Quilting with a ruler gives you a lot of guidance. A ruler is a great tool to quilt your lines along. But just like drawing straight lines along a ruler, your ruler will shift sometimes. It will sometimes not sit quite the way you intended. And that’s completely fine. It’s precisely by daring to just start and try that you’ll gradually learn how to quilt with a ruler.
The more you practice, the better your hands can create what you have in mind. That’s truly the case with quilting. They say “Practice makes perfect”, but I’ll be honest: all that practice still didn’t make it perfect for me.
It’s precisely when you let go of the perfect picture that space opens up to play and try new things. That’s what we’re going to do in this quilt along!
Picture Perfect QAL
We’ll start on April 27 by sewing the quilt top. Then, from May 21 onwards, we’ll quilt together with rulers, quilting 1 block every two weeks. Here is the QAL schedule:
Schedule
- 9 April: Announcement on the Bernina blog
- 27 April: Pattern of the quilt top
- 21 May: Block 1 — Mini Lollipop
- 4 June: Block 2 — Dot
- 18 June: Block 3 — Elvira
- 2 July: Block 4 — Petunia
- 16 July: Block 5 — Every Angle
- 30 July: Block 6 — Taj
- 13 August: Block 7 — Squiggy
- 27 August: Block 8 — Smiley
- 10 September: Block 9 + finishing the quilt
The quilt consists of nine blocks. I will quilt each block with a different quilt ruler. You can decide for yourself whether to use the same ruler, a different ruler, or go for free motion quilting. There is no right or wrong, the goal of the QAL is to practice.
The quilt
The Picture Perfect quilt is 44 by 50 inches, which is approximately 110 x 125 cm. This is a great size to quilt on your own machine. Not too large. But large enough to gain experience with holding and moving the quilt under your machine.
The polaroid blocks in the quilt are 12 by 14 inches, 30 x 35 cm. Around them we make sashing strips 2 inches wide.
Foundation Paper Piecing
The blocks are made using foundation paper piecing (FPP). For this quilt I used FPP on Freezer Paper. You’ll find more information and instructions in the next blog post along with the pattern.
Small sections
Quilting a quilt can sometimes feel overwhelming. You’ve spent so much time making a beautiful quilt top, and then comes the part that makes most quilters nervous: the quilting itself. That’s what makes a project like the Picture Perfect quilt so fun. It gives you the space to practice and to make mistakes.
Because we quilt one small section at a time, it doesn’t matter at all if one pattern turns out better than another. We fill section by section, and you’ll find that by the ninth section it already goes a lot more smoothly than the first.
Get the fabric kit
I have fabric kits for the Picture Perfect quilt available in the webshop. The kit includes all fabrics for the quilt top (44 x 55 inch). You can add batting and backing when you order. When you purchase a kit, you are automatically added to the QAL email list.
Join with your own fabric
Prefer to use fabrics from your own stash? No problem. The pattern for the Picture Perfect quilt is free via the Bernina blog, it will be published on April 27.
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Rulers
These are the rulers I will be using during this project. For each ruler I will make a video showing a new quilting pattern. Feel free to pick and choose the rulers you want to work with. It’s your quilt, so quilt your pictures any way you like. This QAL is all about practicing and exploring ruler quilting together.
Use code PICTUREPERFECT10 for 10% off all quilting rulers in the Sugaridoo webshop.
Not sure if you have a high shank or low shank machine? Watch this video to find out.
I’m in!
You can share this image on Instagram or Facebook to show that you’re joining the Picture Perfect QAL.
Will you tag @Bernina.benelux and @Sugaridoo in your post? We’d love to see who’s all joining in.
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