Ruler work Revelation

I wanted to talk about something I recently discovered, and perhaps hear from others whether you've had a similar experience.

With ruler work being the newest domestic machine quilting trend, I've been exploring it more. Now that I have a ruler work foot (purchased in March) for both my Bernina 440, and Janome 1600P (for more than a year), I've been able to do a little comparison quilting. 

What I've learned is that ruler work on one machine may not be the same as ruler work on another machine. This revelation has added to my concerns about teaching ruler work quilting - as I have been asked several times to do.

You see, the ability to successfully accomplish ruler work quilting depends so much on the sewing machine! Not only is having a properly-fitting ruler work foot a necessity, but another concern is how the feed dogs are disengaged or covered. The sewing machine bed must be flat!

Let me show you.

As you can see in this close-up photo of my Janome sewing bed set up for quilting, this machine requires a special quilting plate that replaces the regular sewing plate. This one is thicker. See the area circled in red? The thickness of the quilting plate creates a small lip; there's a difference in heights. This thicker plate is meant to cover the feed dogs. The teeth of the feed dogs are engaged and moving, but they're "deep" enough below the surface that they cannot grab the fabric.

Even with a Supreme Slider on top of the sewing machine bed, the edge of the quilting plate is still slightly visible.

Very easily, when trying to slide the ruler and the quilt under the needle, the ruler can bumpily move along, or can even get hung up on the lip.

This was an accidental discovery when I was ruler work quilting a small piece with a thinner-than-usual batting - Warm 'n Natural. Sometimes the ruler would catch on that lip and I couldn't move the quilt at all. Grrr.

I'm surmising that I previously haven't had a problem with rulers because I most often use Quilter's Dream battings which are more dense. Sometimes I even use double batting (Quilter's Dream Wool on top of Quilter's Dream Cotton). Could quilting on a thicker quilt give more of a cushion that compensates for the lip underneath?

All this thoughts came together when I was ruler work quilting on the Bernina. It has feed dogs that can be lowered, meaning that the Bernina sewing machine bed is completely flat. There's no lip for a ruler to catch on.

However, I will continue to quilt on my Janome. For one thing, it stitches faster than a Bernina. And for another, it has a 9" harp (1/12" more space than the Bernina) for quilting big quilts.

My take-away from this is to simply be aware that any quilt on which I do Janome ruler work should have a substantial batting. Linda