Do you ever get to that moment when you’ve finished piecing a quilt top and get a little bit daunted by the next stage – the quilting?
When quilting, I sometimes quilt by domestic machine, using both the walking foot (which I think is very underestimated) and free motion options. I also love quilting by hand but whichever method I choose I find I can get a little stumped as to how to mark out the design on the quilt top.
Sometimes I know exactly what design to use, sometimes I have to put the top away for a while before inspiration strikes but, once I’ve decided, how do we mark the top so we can quilt it out?
Introducing one of my favourite pieces of equipment (also fabulously cheap in comparison with a lot of must have tools) the Crease Marker from Sew Easy.
This wonderful little gadget is a simple piece of firm plastic, which has a spatular like blunt blade at one end, the other a handle. Used against a ruler you get perfectly straight lines but I also like to ‘freehand’ with it to create curves, such as leaf shapes I recently hand quilted. You can also use a template to draw around, such as a heart which I also used in conjunction with the Crease Marker.
The thing I like most about this gadget is that it leaves a crease line in the top which you can follow but doesn’t leave any chalk or ink which can sometimes be a little hard to remove. My image doesn’t really do it justice, you can see the indent. If sewing in poorer light it sometimes takes a little adjustment of the angle to be able to follow the crease on darker fabrics but I’ve only found this a problem when hand stitching on an evening.
I’m hand quilting a large quilt at the moment (and will be for another few years I’m estimating!) and am taking it one block at a time. It’s slowly getting there and I would have struggled to mark the many different ideas without this tool.
I recently started to organise my equipment as I’m setting up a new teaching studio. I can hear the builders digger as I type and, rather than fumbling around for hand quilting needles, thread and all the little items I use when hand quilting, I gathered them all together into a hand quilting kit – in a lovely tin, of course. This has made it much easier to find everything I need and the Crease Marker has earned its place there.
Overall I can certainly recommend this little item and special thanks to Groves for letting me test the Crease Marker from Sew Easy.
Strictly Quilting 