The Ruler Game

This ruler is a Bias Rectangle - part of Kaye England's Cut for the Cure line of rulers. I bought it a few years ago and... well, I've never used it - can you see - it's still wrapped up. You can see the Cut for the Cure rulers on Kaye's website here - http://www.kayeengland.com/searchresult.aspx?CategoryID=28 . I also have the kaleidoscope ruler - I used it to make my Octagon Flowers quilt last year. Love that ruler and have plans to use it again. So, now I want to try my hand at this Bias Rectangle ruler - thanks to -

Laurie (aka Quilter gone WILD) recently posted about her collection of un-used rulers. She picked one, read the directions and got busy and is now making some lovely pineapple blocks. You can check out her progress here - http://gottaquilt.blogspot.com/search/label/pineapple%20quilt

I wanted to play - so I picked Bias Rectangle. Except - I couldn't find any directions, shoot I couldn't even find the ruler anywhere on the internet. Ah well, it is a Kaye England ruler so I looked up her site, got her e-mail address and fired off a question - how do I use this ruler? Don't you know, she answered, within an hour no less, with very detailed directions. Turns out my ruler was discontinued and made into 2 seperate rulers, but with Kaye's instructions I can figure out how to use it. This is the 2nd time I've e-mailed Kaye England with a question about a ruler and I must say, I am super impressed with her immediate answers and detailed information!

Instructions in hand I now know how to flip the thing around to cut what I want to cut. And lookie there - those 2 units are the very same shape as Judy L's Tri-Recs rulers she has been using on her pink quilt (http://judylaquidara.blogspot.com/2007/11/pink-quilt-directions.html) !!! Which means, I can make Judy's quilt without buying new rulers!!!

Sooo - who else wants to play The Ruler Game in December? Go on - go pick one!!!

About those segments...

Those fancy dancy new blocks I posted about the other day.... they are just 6.5" 9 patch blocks sliced in half 2X... see?

All of mine have either blue or purple for the outside pieces and yellow for the inside 4. There are lots of different ways to lay these little segments together.

Why do I have stacks of these segments? Did I have an original plan? Hummm - interesting questions... My ORIGINAL intent was to make Sister's Choice from Bonnie Hunter's site and I had a fair amount of 9 patch blocks made before I got carried away with my rotary cutter! Actually, I was a bit annoyed because my seams weren't coming together perfectly (the dangers of switching sewing machines during the same project) so I thought if I cut everything down smaller it would be less obvious. Of course, about 1/8" is not very obvious anyway so I am not so sure why I thought that bit of a smidge off was so glaring in the first place! I guess it doesn't really matter anymore because almost every single 9 patch is already sliced and I do really like the resulting new blocks. I think it would be fun to make starting out with a bigger 9 patch block too - the 6.5" size cuts down to some small pieces. But back to the project in hand/in progress/started and needing to be finished - I figure that I should have enough segments to make 12 of those 12" blocks I like so much. With wide sashing, cornerstones, double borders - should bring it up to a nice sized bed quilt.

*

I got the idea for cutting the 9 patches into 4's from a post of Nine's from last November - http://prairiequilts.blogspot.com/2006/11/life-gets-teedjus.html. Don't ask me how I remembered this idea months later or even who posted it, for that matter, but one day - it popped into my head as the perfect solution for my abandoned start on Sister's Choice.

*

I would like to make Siser's Choice someday... I just won't switch sewing machines mid-project!

New Blocks!

I've been wondering what to do with these "segments" for awhile now ... so for the past few days I've left them out and have played around with them some - this is what I've come up with... I need 16 little segments to make a 12" block. I've already started to piece 4 segments together to make 1/4 of the block - just have to piece those units together into blocks now that I've made a decision! And, I have stacks of these segments. Stacks. Oh yes, it is good to come up with a plan for something I already have on hand!