Monday, March 21, 2011

New gadget!

I bought a new ruler-gadget at our quilt show yesterday and tried it out today. It's the Lil' Twister ruler and here's my progression through the process:
You take 5" squares (perfect for charm packs of which I have many!) and make 9-patches out of them.
Add a 3" frame around them making a 14" block.















You take this little 3 1/2' Lil' Twister ruler and lining up the lines on the ruler with the seams you've just sewn, slice up the nice little blocks leaving this behind:


But what you get are these cute 12 1/2" pinwheel blocks that would make a lovely baby quilt, which is what I'm making this for--















You might think there's a lot of waste but you can cut the remaining scraps into 2 1/2" squares. I used 36, 5" squares for this quilt center so have 36, 2 1/2" squares to use for the border or whatever. They also make a larger one of these rulers to use with "layer cake" charms. I think I might buy one!

Oh, and I spent 2 1/2 hours on this project. I plan to add sashing and borders and am thinking about making it Minkee!


4 comments:

Angie in SoCal said...

Oh, I like this! Especially as you can do something with the waste. It will be wonderful in minkee. Now, what was the name of that ruler?

Angie in SoCal said...

Duh - the name is right in your post. Pardon my question - I just got up and haven't had my chocolate this morning.

Mary said...

I've seen similar quilts while visiting other blogs and now I know how they did it. Thanks for sharing the process, and nice work!

Jennifer Woo said...

Nice!! I love the speed and lack of waste. Looks great. I am going to the show at Cal Expo on Friday so I will look for the ruler. Would be fun. I also have far to many charm packs (stashed away) but would love to make some gifts in advance!