Day 4 in blog writing challenge brings us to favorite tools

Hello again my friends,

on this day 4 of blog writing challenge, lets talk about favorite tools.

Honestly, I could probably write for days about this, since I am one of those firm believers in having the right tool for the job and also having the best possible tool you can afford for the job.

In so many years of quilting I accumulated many of them, but for today I will focus on cutting tools.

In my many years of teaching quilting, I found that cutting tends to be one of the dreaded parts of the process, specially for beginners, or it can be the first one to cause trouble in getting the desired finished product – if pieces are not cut right or precisely it is hard to get the accurate blocks! Besides the sharp blade in your cutter, one of the main tools for good cutting are rulers – I really really LOVE a good, smart and well made rulers!

When it comes to rulers, I like to divide them in two main groups:

1. general purpose rulers (like the pile on the right) and
2. specialty rulers (some of my favorites shown on the left)

You may or may not ever use specialty rulers, but there are some that I really love to use – like Classic Curve Ruler, or 60 degree rulers and there is many others.

More importantly, lets talk about general purpose rulers we use pretty much every day. My favorite? – definitely Creative Grids brand. Here is what I look for in a good ruler:

1. size markings down to 1/8″ and in BOTH directions
2. color of lines that will be easily seen on BOTH light and dark fabrics
3. angle lines! (like 30, 45 and 60 degree lines) – so very helpful because you can cut so many different shapes besides strips and squares, if you have angle lines (like diamonds, or triangles…)
4. good grip on fabric to minimize the slipping

All of these requirements are present in very good form on the Creative Grids rulers and that is why they are my favorite. The sizes I use the most – by far it is my 6 1/2″ x 12 1/2″ rectangle one! add to that the 6 1/2″ square and sometimes the longer one 6 1/2″ x 18 1/2″. One of these days, I will get myself some of the large square ones, but for now my 15″, very old (about 20+ years old!), Omnigrid ruler works just fine. Omnigrid is another brand that does have good features (and when I started, many years ago, it was the best really).

With rulers comes the need for a good cutting mat. Here is my favorite now – it is Gudrun Erla designed mat, made by Creative Grids again. WOW!! I love it!! It actually has two different sets of lines on two sides – a classic one:

And one more suited for use with Gudrun’s Stripology rulers, that has lines at every HALF inch – I find that very useful for just about everything!! So that is the side I use the most. Also, I treated myself with the larges size (24″ x 36″) and I really, really love it.

Now speaking of Stripology rulers… If you haven’t try one, you might want to. It is one of those rulers designed to speed-up your cutting (you can cut multiple strips at a time), but the main difference with Stripology rulers is that they are designed and made so well!! So many clever features, very good quality and – most importantly for such big ruler – no slipping!!

You can see my Stripology XL above – I really LOVE it. Just as an example: on above photo, I have 4 FQs layered and folded in half (so that is 8 layers of fabric, maximum I cut at once, with a sharp blade). I needed to cut four 2 1/2″ strips from each FQ. So nere, I squared them all up (on the left side) by aligning the long horizontal line to the fold of the fabric, and proceeded to cut my strips – 1, 2, 3 and 4 – done in about 30 seconds? And they ARE accurate and straight (once you take care of aligning that horizontal line). That is FAST.

OK, so for all that, once needs a good rotary cutter, right? My trusty ones are two – Olfa large, retractable one and for my new medium size cutter I tried new kid on the block – LDH Rotary cutter.

I really love them both. The retractable blade feature is one of those great innovations for safety and that is VERY important.

The way I found LDH cutter is because they make the most amazing scissors!! Since I do garment sewing, I saw these on IG and gave them a try – AMAZING!! I have regular and pinking shears and use them all the time! Absolutely love them!

And yes, next on my garment sewing list is this gorgeous rayon from Sharon Holland’s Kismet collection – sooooo yummy!!

Well friends, these are some of my favrote tools – how about you? Do you have any “must try” tools I don’t know about? Let me know and let’s chat tomorrow again,

Love,

Marija