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| Blossoms Quilt Sampler |
WeAllSew's Blossoms Quilt Sampler is Amanda Murphy's next step in her "Rulerwork 2.0" machine quilting master class. Not everything is done for you in this beautiful project as lovely 12" blocks are used to create a beautiful canvas for the quilting. It's easy to use for any intermediate quilter, but it also has plenty of advanced design ideas to blow your mind about how to utilize your favorite rulers.
The Project Blueprint
This 34-1/2” x 34-1/2” sampler is a beautiful compact size that would be easy to work on a standard domestic machine or on a sit-down longarm. The original block backgrounds were designed to be crisp solid white to allow the intricate threadwork to really stand out, using the Amanda's subtle First Frost fabric line for Benartex.
The real strength of this three-part tutorial series is the technical information that is presented in a practical way throughout each of the three videos:
- Smart Seam Pressing: Amanda advises pressing the seaming for piecing open. This allows you complete freedom to quilt "along-the-ditch" either on the right or left side of the seam, without having to contend with large one-sided fabric hops.
- Amanda does not hide her stitches, instead she uses a heavier 28 wt. contrasting thread. The focal blossoms are made from Aurifil cotton thread while the background micro-fills are made with a classic 50 wt. white thread. This creates an impression that captures your eye as you look at the sampler layout, as illustrated on the right, to the geometric precision of the petals.
- Machine Setup Mastery: To avoid dangerous ruler slips, remember to drop your feed dogs and completely turn off your machine’s automatic hover or auto-lift feature. Shooting a ruler at a foot that springs up like a spring is apt to break the needle.
- Ruler Physics: In part 2 and part 3, you will learn that the smaller the circle, the more often you will need to stop and move your hands around to keep it moving. You will also learn how quilting along the inside edge on the oval rulers will provide excellent stability rather than traversing the outer edge.
- Keeping the quilting density even or flat: One important point is to ensure the evenness of the quilting density or flatness. Quilting behind your blossoms at a dense micro-fill and working open borders will result in a wavy, distorted quilt! In the border, Amanda creates a perfectly balanced ribbon design to perfectly lay the sampler flat.
Final Thought
The Blossoms Quilt Sampler is more than enough to show you that you don't have to have a huge layout that fills a room to create extraordinary textile art by leaning on the rulerwork foundations of circles, straight lines and ovals, and playing with the different weights of the thread. Take a ruler with a foot 72, assemble a practice sandwich and try this pretty sampler!
