Rotary cutters have transformed quilting. In my grandmother's day, fabric was snipped with scissors, which may or may not be sharp depending on the propensity of children in the house to use them on construction paper. You could cut one piece of cloth at a time, the blades expanding and contracting like a cawing bird. But a rotary cutter can slice through eight layers at once along a plastic ruler.
I cut standing up, leaning into the fabric, with one finger firmly planted on the mat. If I don't it is easy to have the ruler slip. I don't blame her. I wander too, without an anchor.
One of the women whose quilting videos I watch is named Jenny, and her family rescued a sluggish economy in her Missouri town. She has a devoted following and has expanded my sewing skills to a new level.
Jenny often bases her designs on what is called a layer cake. These are precut ten inch squares of coordinating fabric, and I love them. A package of 42 of them makes a full sized quilt. Since ads for them show up in my inbox every day, I have a tendency to click.
The layer cake I was cutting this week was in preparation for a design called Lady of the Lake. It will include over 900 pieces when it is finished. In her video she apologizes for the waste produced by trimming one component by over an inch. She is a frugal woman from the midwest and her goal is to use every bit. But in this case she promises it is worth it. So I and twenty thousand other sewers brazenly chopped.
Another part of the pattern utilizes a trick called easy 16, and you end up with that many half square triangles. These are conveniently very close to size and need only a haircut after ironing. In fact sometimes the trim is so spare I consider skipping it, but I know that would take a toll on the integrity of the finished blocks.
As I was cutting I remembered a conversation from the other day. I had said too much. I wished I could go back and shave off one of the comments, as it was thoughtless. It is my intention to clean up my language, letting criticism drop to the trash. If I am lazy, the integrity of my relationships suffers.
Then there are the larger mistakes that need to be edited out. The knee jerk response of having an opinion about someone else's choices comes to mind. The whole thing needs to go. It takes more guts, but Someone promises that it is worth it.
