New Year - New Tools

Well - it's really February but the fact is that I just got two cool new tools.

One of my favorite places to shop for quilting tools is the hardware store.  Fun to look and think about the different ways to use various tools there.  One of the critiques of my quilts from judges has been that my corners should be square.  I've gotten much better about cutting accurately and sewing accurately.  Once a quilt is quilted it sometimes has a tendency to not be quite as square as when it was put on the quilting frame - perhaps due to the density of quilting across the quilt and perhaps due to a quilt fairy playing tricks on me.  Anyway, blocking a quilt once quilted can be done to help pull the quilt back into shape.  To do this, you need a big expanse of floor or table on which to secure the quilt and a tool to make sure it is square.  Enter my new tool - a T-square!

Doesn't look like a T-square yet - but this makes it easy to store.

Useful not only for finished quilts but also to check how out of square a backing might be.  The length of the T-square is laying along a seam where two pieces of fabric are joined.

 My other cool tool came in the mail yesterday.  Red Snappers, developed by Renae Haddadin.  Renae is an award winning quilter and very inventive when it comes to developing tools to assist in quilting.

The small clamps are used to hold the material in place.  You can see that they are gripping the edge of a leader into which a small tube of plastic has been inserted.

Long snappers are then put in place, securely holding the fabric to the leader.  To attach these, you can lay the leader on the table and press the snapper in place but in my case, that means a long reach - hard on the back.  An alternative is to press the snapper while holding the leader against the belly bar - a somewhat slippery option requiring hands that are stronger than mine.  I've found that holding the fabric in place and pressing the snapper in place against my thumbs works best.  Won't need the painter's tape to protect me from the pins on the leaders!

 Loading quilts in preparation for quilting has taken anywhere from 45 minutes to over an hour and a half.  The other watchout was all the pins used to pin fabric to the leaders.  And if I had to rotate quilts, it took quite a bit of time.  So these Red Snappers are not only great time savers but finger savers, too!

Cheers!

Margaret