And now for the Rulers and Templates

I have spoken about the Westalee Ruler Foot, now the fun part the rulers and templates.

Using Circles on Quilts for Domestic Machines and a straight ruler.

Each corner of the 1/2" lines was sewn using the ruler in a different position

Circles on Quilts Template for domestic and sit-down machines stitch circles from 2" to 12"

(this is the only locating rotating circle template for stitching concentric circles on a domestic machine)

Most of our template designs are made in 3 mm for Low Shank domestic machines and 4,5 mm for High Shank domestic machines and of course in 6 mm for Long arm Machines.

Designing our Ruler Foot has been a long journey and one of the reasons for that was the necessity to make a ruler foot that worked on as many machines as possible as simply as possible. The testing has been extensive.




Our Ruler Foot does not have any mechanisms to interfere with the use of templates, you can work from all edges of the foot Left - Right - Back and Front this makes its so much more useful.







Long arm quilter's use 6mm rulers and templates, because of the hopping motion of the ruler foot, some machines hop higher that others and 6 mm works well for most long arm quilting machines.

  6 mm  or 1/4"                  4.5 mm or 3/16"         3 mm or 1/8"

6 mm is the thickness used for Long arm  machines because of the height traveled by the hopping foot hopping



When using a Low Shank Machine, you will need to use 3 mm Acrylic Templates. Phaff machines with IDT are low Shank and will require 3 mm templates.
The picture show a Pfaff machine with a 6 mm template that is to close to the Shank and IDT mechanism.






We recommend when using the Westalee Ruler Foot:
4.5mm thick templates on High Shank Machines
3 mm on Low Shank Machines

Please note that the Ruler Foot shown is a prototype

Westalee Design copyright 2008-2014. 

More on the Westalee Ruler Foot

More on the Westalee Ruler Foot?

Who can use a Westalee Ruler Foot?

Well, almost anyone, the Westalee Ruler foot has been designed to fit Low Shank and High Shank Domestic Sewing Machines like - Pfaff - Husqvarna - Janome - Bernina - Brother - Juki - Singer

Pfaff - most Pfaff machines are Low Shank
Husqvarna - most Husqvarna machines are Low Shank
Janome - have both Low Shank and High Shank machines
Bernina - have both Low Shank and High Shank machines (with Bernina machines you will need a shank adaptor)
Brother - have both Low Shank and High Shank machines
Juki machines - are Low Shank

If you do not know what shank your machine is, all you need to do is lower your foot and then measure the height of the centre of the hole for the screw from the needle plate.

Low Shank                                                                                                    High Shank

High Shank                                 Low Shank
Westalee Ruler foot

The Westalee Ruler Foot is different from any other ruler foot on the market and has been designed to work with our Quilting Templates.

The Ruler foot is designed to float just above the quilt sandwich, there is no hopping mechanism to get in the way of your hands and impede your vision.

There is no need for a ruler foot to hop, you have more control and ease of movement with a foot that floats.

The Westalee Ruler Foot has a perfect 1/2" circle so that you can use your ruler from all sides and you can work inside and outside templates. with no flat spot in your quilting caused by the  cut out at the front of the foot.

If you free motion you may have noticed that when using a free motion foot with a spring loaded hop or a free motion foot that hops on the needle bar screw, it can often cause problems and many people will modify the foot so that it no longer hops.

I have tried other feet and found that the hopping feet can often press to low on the quilt causing an uneven almost jerky motion.


Please note that the Ruler Foot shown is a prototype.


All Westalee Design Rulers, Templates and Tools are protected by copyright 2008-2014. Simple template. Powered by Blogger.

More about the Ruler Foot

Why is it important to use a 1/2" Ruler Foot?

Circles on Quilts Wreath 3 - repeats 24 times

Templates and Rulers should be designed to be stitched 1/4" from the template edge, the needle is in the centre of a 1/2" round collar.

If the collar is smaller or larger than 1/2" or not round then the pattern you are stitching will not be correct, repeating patterns will not return to the correct position. 

This diagram shows how one of our Circles on Quilts Spinning Wheel designs should look when stitched at 1/4" for the template edge (USING A TRUE 1/2" FOOT). The pattern stitches to fill an

11 1/2" circle. Beginning at the green and ending at the red the pattern completes 8 rotations. 

In this diagram the pattern is stitched using a 9/16" ruler foot and because the foot is larger the pattern stitched out is smaller and therefore the repeating design does not meet to complete the circle, it is also smaller.

When we design our templates we make the stitching line sew at 1/4" from the template edge. Because of the variances in the long arm quilting machines ruler foot, we make our templates machine specific, so if you are ordering remember to check you machine in the drop box.

Why you can't sew with any shape foot.

In this graphic you can see that when the Ruler is against the edge of the template the needle will always be stitching a 1/4" from the template edge. 

This graphic show that when you are using some of the other feet available the needle will not be the same distance from the template as you move around giving you an uneven distance from the template edge.

The more repeats required to complete the design, the more important it is to use the correct sized foot. Our Circles on Quilts Wreath 16 template repeats 16 times.

The pattern at the sides of this blog is stitched using our Curly-q templates.