Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Island Batik Planes, Trains and Automobiles hop continues

Today the blog hop features two quilts in the Georgia Peach line.  So pretty!  Visit these blogs and make sure to leave a blog post to win a great fabric prize at each one:

One Quilting Circle
KISSed Quilts

Here's a little sneak preview of my project for Friday's hop:

Tuesday Tip:


For today's tip I wanted to show you how I dealt with cutting out the large templates for the circular table runner I am working on.  The first thing I had to do was enlarge the pattern by 200%.  That's a whole other tip for another day - it was quite a process for me but I got it all right in the end.  

Then I taped together my pieces and had my full size template ready to go
This is the pieced section that I will be using to cut out my finished piece and the template.

After aligning the template bottom with the square and making sure my template is lined up straight, I place my ruler on top of the paper template and fabric, lining up the 1/4 inch line with the sewing line on the template.  This way, even if I have accidentally cut off part of the seam allowance my fabric will still have the full 1/4 inch seam allowance.  Cut off excess fabric with your rotary cutter.

Without moving your fabric or template, move ruler to opposite seam allowance and line up the sewing line at the 1/4 inch mark on the ruler.  I then move to the side of the cutting table and cut off the excess fabric.  The small curve at the top I cut without the ruler, just carefully use the cutter to trim.

While I am at it, here is how I trimmed the top of the square at the bottom to get a nice point at the seam:
Using a ruler with a 45 degree line, I lined up one of the seams with that mark and made sure the point was exactly at the 1/4 inch mark of the ruler.  Trim off excess and when you sew your 1/4 inch seam your point will meet the seam perfectly!

Hope these tips are helpful to you!  I am always looking for a faster, more accurate way to do things, and enjoy sharing what I have learned with you.

1 comment:

teachpany said...

Great tips!