Tools of the Trade
So last weekend I sliced my finger pretty badly with my rotary cutter and whenever someone asked how I did it and I told them that, they had no idea what I was talking about. I have decided to do a post about my obscure equipment. Inspiration comes from odd places.
There are definitely a few obvious tools that everyone knows about such as a sewing machine and scissors and an iron. I want to talk about the cutting tools and what it takes to make that perfect piece.
All patterns call for many shapes and sizes of pieces when quilting. The most common are squares and rectangles. For example, lately I was working on a pattern hat calls for 2" strips. Lots and lots of them. Personally, I would get really bored and frustrated really fast with a hunk of fabric and just a pair of scissors trying to cut perfectly 2" strips. Thankfully someone came up with a much better system!
This is what my prep looks like. I have a giant table with a giant cutting mat and many, many acrylic rulers for cutting. As you can see, both the rulers and the mat have measurement markings in inches. These have hash marks down to eighth inches. Unfortunately, these markings do not always match up if you get cheap equipment or if your cutting mat warps over time. Mine all match up, but I use either the ruler markings or the mat markings and don't switch back and forth.
Back to the example of cutting strips, I will need to use a straight rectangular ruler to cut my pieces as well as a rotary cutter.
So I fold my fabric and fit it to the grid of my cutting mat. Lining up the top is not important, but you do need the bottom and left edge to follow your grid. Here I have the fabric lined up as if I wanted to cut a 2" strip. This will be 2" x 44" due to the fact that fabric is 44" wide. You can see the fabric is already lined up at the 2" line of the ruler and the cutting mat. Now how do I cut this?
This is a rotary cutter. It is a round (incredibly sharp) blade attached to a handle that work like a pizza cutter. This will get the job done.
Using my left hand to hold the ruler, I just run the rotary cutter along the edge of it and I get a perfect 2"strip. I can then just scoot my ruler over 2" and cut another and another until I reach the quantity I need. Just keep fingers out of the way! Sewing scissors and cutters are super sharp!
Here are a few of the tools that I use on every project. My normal rotary cutter is hands down the most used. The rotary cutter on the right has a woogly blade so if I cut pieces and they will be sitting for a while it won't fray as badly. The scissors are all used for various things from thread trimming for the little spring loaded ones to cutting off extra batting for the large ones. As I am sure you have heard, quilters are VERY protective of their sewing blades! They are incredibly sharp and dull very quickly if used on anything but fabric.
So that is the quick and dirty run down on how to cut pieces for a quilt. There are many types of rulers (as shown in the first picture) that cut specific shapes. I could go on for days just talking about rulers, but I would like you all to read my future posts, so I will leave it at this for now.
Please feel free to email me with questions or things you would like for me to talk about in future posts. I would love the feedback.
Thanks for reading.
