Monday, May 21, 2012

Copy Machine as Quilting Tool

I got so much done last week in the kitchen, yard, and garage. I volunteered at one craft fair and visited another. I ran errands, got a great deal on a mid century sideboard, and relocated furniture around the house, but none of those feats was sewing-related. Sorry it was quiet around here. This week I'm back in the clubhouse (aka my sewing space) making some progress. 


I decided I needed to make good on all of this talk about designing Rose Star blocks ahead of time so that I will always have hand sewing with me when I'm on the go. In order to do this, I needed plenty of the  paper kites and hexagon pieces cut out. The few pieces I had been reusing weren't going to be enough to make piles of blocks.


I couldn't seem to scan and print to scale at home, so I went to the nearby office store to take things up a notch. Copies were cheap. I was so pleased the edges weren't chopped off of my templates and everything was to scale. I got home and started cutting out all of the shapes.


Even with shapes cut from just a few sheets, I was able to get two blocks designed and ready to go. Yay!


The design process is tedious for me, and cutting all of these pieces takes awhile. I think it's about an hour per block. Of course the clubhouse looks like this:


That's normal, though, right? Getting a design wall up is definitely on the to do list. If I keep enough stuff out on the floor maybe Mr. Pins will lend a hand.

If you've discovered any secret ways to make office supplies work for your sewing process, I'd love to hear about them.

Happy Crafting!

3 comments:

  1. cutting all the bits out first is definitely the way to go. I did that too, and it made things so much easier!

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  2. i use our industrial paper cutter at work to cut my templates out of old manila file folders. although that probably doesn't help you out at all, lol. you totally need a design wall!

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    1. Ooooh, that's a really great idea! I might have to employ the paper cutter technique on a future English paper piecing project with hexagons. Reusing the old file folders is genius. That sounds like the perfect weight of paper to use :-)

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