Quilting hasn’t always been butterflies and rainbows. It used to be a lot harder and more labour intensive than it currently is. Thanks to modern breakthroughs, it’s been made way easier – not to say that it’s a breeze now, but there have been some revolutionary inventions that have eased the suffering of many quilters:

Cutting Mat

Nobody wants to see a good table or table cloth spoiled. In the olden days, before these mats were invented, quilters would need to decide between choosing a table that would get nicks, scratches and scuffs or find an old table fabric or material that they did not want any longer and let that take the punishment.

But the cutting mat does not just save your table, it also includes pre-ruled grids and rulings, measurements and templates.

Many cutting mats actually have templates for corners, circles and other assorted shapes. This simple addition has saved quilters world wide thousands of hours in measurements and rulings, not to mention their tables and table cloths.

Rotary Cutter

If you do not know what a rotary cutter is, imagine a pizza cutter, only with a much sharper blade.

This replaces the typical scissors and allows folk to cut the same amount of material in a fraction of the time. Because there isn’t any need utilize a squeezing motion like scissors, you can cut in one swift, smooth motion and avoids jagged bits that can happen when separating your hands for another scissor cut.

Another great thing it does is cut through multiple layers. So folding your material along the cutting line can further reduce cutting time without sacrificing the quality of your cut.

This device alone has slashed my cutting time by more than half.

The Quilting Ruler

The quilting ruler is another brilliant invention and when you need it, you really need it.

While its perfect for measuring distances, gaps, widths and cuts, it actually comes into shine in some of those clumsy to gauge situations.

It has got a good range of pre-set angles and is transparent, so you can measure and check things that it the ruler is sitting on top of.

It has really turn out to be useful in some very unusual situations, there’s one particular green quilt design that I could not have completed without it.

These are the items that I simply couldn’t do without and if they were to disappear from my world tomorrow… I’d just give up quilting all together!

Would you like more green quilt design ideas? Then head on over to Jane Green’s how to make a patchwork quilt site now!

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