Rulers to quilt by.....

Last Wednesday, when I finished teaching my class at Firefly, I packed up and then was at the register paying for some fabric when in walked my friend, Susan. I hadn't seen her in months and was thrilled to catch up on "what's new". And she really had some "what's new" to share! She has developed a couple of great rulers/tools that you might just be interested in learning about. I'm going to give you a little info on them and will share a link to sites where they can be purchased.

This first one is a folding ruler that is for cutting bias binding. It's called the "SIMPLI-EZ Bias Ruler" TM by Susan Brown and is available at http://www.simplicity.com/ . In the photo below, you can see the ruler at full length in the top half of the photo and then folded up and ready to store or take to a retreat. :-)

Susan apologized for her wrinkly sample swatch but I barely noticed as I was more interested in the ruler. And unfortunately, my camera battery started to die and so I got no more pictures. What I could have shown you with the next photo was how the ruler allows you to cut exactly at the spot where you need to sew sections of your bias binding together. If you are a quilter, you know what I am talking about.

The next tool is just that.......a tool so I probably shouldn't have referred to it as a ruler. This tool enhances the ruler that you see above and it is called "The Binding Tool". You can find it at http://www.quiltersmerc.com/ .

Complete directions are written on the tool so it makes it very easy to use. I'll try to summarize the steps as Susan demonstrated..........
In the photo below Susan is showing that you will leave a 12" opening between your binding "tails", which need to be 10" on each side.

In these next two photos, you can see that Susan is marking and measuring. The directions are on the tool so I am not going to type them here.

In these next two photos, Susan is demonstrating that she would cut along the end of this angle on the tool. She does it on both binding "tails".

When the pieces are cut, she brings them together and will stitch the two pieces and they become a perfect continuous piece of binding.

I realize that my photos may not make this really clear but trust me........the Binding Tool really works. My friend, Carol, has one and says it works great. I haven't used mine yet because the two quilts I have that are in need of binding are in my "to do" stack of projects. :-) I did cut some binding for a project and I love that folding ruler.

Susan will be at the AQS Show in Lancaster, PA at the end of the month, so if you happen to be there look for her at Quilter's Mercantile booth.

In the weather department here in Minnesota.........we hit a record high of 64 degrees today and I threw open the window and let the breeze bring in some fresh air. Our snow is melting so rapidly that what was still almost two feet of snow on the ground a few days ago is now just mounds of it at the end of driveways and along the curbs. There is water everywhere and the sound of it running down the street and into the street drains is like listening to a little creek in the woods. That is if there was a creek in our woods. All this water and all this melting is causing rising river levels and now an ice jam on the Minnesota River near Henderson. We don't have the severe wind and rain that the Northeast has received, but there will be folks who will suffer flooded basements and homes in all of this. Mother Nature sure brought Spring on in a hurry!

Here's hoping you have a good start to the week!

Sandi