The Best Time

How many of you have been quilting long enough to remember life before the rotary cutter and specialty rulers?  Did you save the cereal boxes to use for making templates?  Back in the day this is how I learned to quilt.    Drafting my own quilts and templates with a plain ole 12 inch school ruler and carboard.  

 Here I am today obsessed with finding the quickest way to square up HST's and timing the process with the stopwatch on my phone.  This timing of the process never happened in those early years.  I just did what I could, when I could and put no pressure on the process. 

 

And I most certainly did not buy any new gadgets to try to speed up the process like I did this weekend.  There's lots of new rulers out there right now for squaring up HST's.  The new slotted trimmers and Bloc Loc are the the two that look the most interesting.  But as usual my thrifty ways won't allow me to purchase either of them.  The next best thing is to make my own as cheaply as possible.   My thinking over the weekend was I need a smaller 4.5" ruler to make my homemade locking ruler.  A locking ruler is faster due to it locks on the seam, then two sides are trimmed.  Slide and twist the ruler  and trim the other two sides.  Very efficient!  With a smaller ruler there's less slide time and should make it quicker.

The smaller ruler saved me a whopping 2 minutes!  Was it worth it?  NO!  But I was excited anyway and thought maybe my technique need to be tweaked.   I'm going to try again today to beat my quickest time because I've lost my mind.  It's whatever keeps me going forward on the HST's.  They have been on the must do list of over 2 years.  

Until next time...

I hope you find time to stitch up something sweet!

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