Sunday, July 1, 2012

This saved me time (and sanity)

Earlier this week I was fretting over getting the squares trimmed quickly for the baby quilt project. After trimming about 50 of them I thought I was going to lose my mind. Well not really, but sheesh.

Then I had a light bulb moment. I had noticed rotating cutting mats in the past but never got one, and had never even tried one out. I decided to check Joann's online to see if they carried them, and by golly they did. And I had a coupon to use.

The Olfa Rotating Self-Healing Rotary Mat (12-inch size) arrived yesterday morning, which was none too soon. I put it to work immediately and now have my 400 squares cut and ready to distribute to the baby quilt sewers.

Why should a rotating make such a difference? Because you can get two or three sides trimmed, rotate the mat one turn counter-clockwise, and made the last cut without having to lift the ruler and realign the square.

And here's a by-the-way thing I learned. This little blue square is a 2 by 3.5 inch piece of rubbery shelf liner, which I use to stabilize my calculator so it doesn't scoot all over the counter when in use.  I repurposed it to be my mat cleaner to get those trimmed whiskers of fabric off the mat before trimming the next block. Worked slick!



1 comment:

West Michigan Quilter said...

What a neat idea with that shelf liner. I have some and will now put it to use. I'm going to have to get one of those rotary boards also. Everyone says they are great.