awwww crap!$!

There has been a shitload of swearing at Badskirt in the past couple of months. Yes, I said shitload. That's a lot more polite than the words that I've been using here.

Points don't line up, blocks are out. Nothing works. I wrongly assumed that my 1/4" foot was on the brink of failure, or worse that I had officially lost my quilting mojo.  So this is a PSA to spare you my grief.

Stop what you are doing and check all of your rulers, templates and cutting mats now!  

When I say to check your rulers, I mean to check every single one of them.  You'll want to start by making sure they aren't warped and then check that they are true. I laid my favorite ruler on top of my cutting mat today and it was out by over an 1/8" over the length of the ruler and had gone all wobbly.  It's no wonder that I can't sew properly, I'm starting with ill and crooked cuts.

Here are a few tips for checking your templates, rulers and cutting mats.

I make no apologies for my grubby cutting mat or short fingernails in this post. I felt this was so important that I needed to take photos right away.

String Method

I'm not the best at remembering to put things away properly and sometimes my rulers are laid awkwardly over something they shouldn't be. And then something heavy gets piled on top of them. It doesn't take a genius to know that the acrylic can and will bend with enough pressure. I'm an idiot, I shouldn't do that. I used to be very protective of my craft supplies, but over time I've become a bit lax. It's really bit me in the butt and will cost me a fortune this month as I need to replace things.   (My favourite SewEasy Guillotine has been screwed. I'm gutted)

First tip for checking things:  Ask yourself, 'is it straight?'

One of the easiest ways to check is something is straight is with a piece of string. Builders use this technique all the time, it goes way back in construction history. If you tape a piece of string to one end of something and pull it taut, it will follow the straightest, shortest path.

With rulers, we want to check both the top and bottom of them but the underside is more important because of parallax. (Thank you, Jenna, for that great insight on templates last week!).   I've washi taped a piece of pink perle to the center of my ruler at a fixed mark.  In this case the 3" mark.

Then I stretched it to the opposite side and held in taut at the same mark. Ideally, you want to do this in the air so that the string has room to pull taut. I had to work with the board because I didn't have 3 arms for pictures.

If it is straight, the string should lay perfect flat against the marked line. If it's warped, the string will drift and won't lay flat under the cutting mark. As you can sort of make out, my guillotine ruler is highly warped and there is a lot of drift. The bad news is that once a ruler is out of whack, you really can't fix it. It's quite hard to get it back to true. You are better off throwing it out and getting a new one.  =/

Check both the top and bottom as your ruler may be concave or convex. Then check the ruler in opposite direction. If your ruler isn't straight, you will catch it in many cases.

You can check your cutting mat in the same way. This method doesn't catch all warping but it will get a lot of  it.

Hooray, my cutting mat seems straight, albeit very grubby in closeup photos!

Measuring

Making sure the measurements of your rulers and cutting mat is accurate is really important. If you have something that you know is absolutely true, measure against that. Otherwise, you'll want to use a relative method.  I have several square rulers in several brands.

When I stack them on top of each other, I know they have slight variance due to the width of their margin. I took each square or rectangular ruler and compared it to my cutting mat. Was the 6" ruler actually six inches?  Did the grid line up with the grid on my cutting mat?  If it was wildly off, how did it compare to other rulers?  Using comparison, I assessed that my cutting mat was in good shape in terms of having accurate measurements, but my templates varied. If the actual marking lines and grid seemed off, I threw them away (yes, expensive, but what good is keeping a crappy ruler?) and I kept the others that lined up well.

Some have really scant margins around them, some are quite generous. I grabbed my washi tape and a marker and labelled them so I'd know what I needed to do with things as I sewed them.

Why are we doing this? Because this ruler just below was lined up at the 0" mark but had shifted an 1/8" by the time I got to 17". That's going to screw your sewing. Also, some brands are inherently crappy for accuracy. I can't make a suggestion for a good brand, but I welcome feedback in the comments!

Checking the 1/4" Seam

In addition to checking each ruler, you should check the quarter inch seam on your templates. Is it scant? Is it generous? Is it wildly off? I chucked a petal template today because it was more like 3/8" instead of a 1/4".   That will affect your quilting in a very bad way.

Once you've measured your templates to see that they are 1/4", grab your sewing machine and make some simple tests blocks and measure them. After using a 1/4" seam, are they still accurate or are they out by an 1/8"?  Look at your rotary cutter and make sure it's cutting true to your templates. Make sure you're giving yourself the best leg up that you can.

These kinds of things will make a big difference. After this morning, there should be a whole lot less cursing in this house. Sure, I'm cursing myself for being careless with my supplies.I'm also disappointed that some brands can't be trusted for accuracy. Test first, sew later.  It's an expensive reminder, but I'm happy to understand what has gone wrong. Hopefully it helps spare you my grief.

Do you have any suggestions?  How are you own rulers looking?