I didn't waste any time trying out my new toys from the quilt festival. Yesterday I broke out my new rotary cutter. When I returned to sewing two years ago, the rotary cutter was new to me. I don't think it existed back in the stone ages when I learned to sew. I was a bit skeptical of the need for all this special equipment that I supposedly needed to pursue my new hobby so I entered conservatively. I bought a rather inexpensive rotary cutter. It has served me well, but I wondered if I was missing anything by not having a "higher end" cutter. The simple answer is, "yes". My new OLFA cutter fits nicely in my hand and has a feature that makes changing the blade very easy. Of course it cuts better but it's not fair to compare this new blade to the used one in my old cutter. The price difference really turned out to be very little for a much better product. I'm sold.
The next new gadget I played with was a chalk marker. Some of you reading this may be yawning about now because really these are NOT new gadgets. But to me, so much was new. I bought a Quilter's Chalk Line, iron away chalk, and a small chalk marker from Sue Pelland Designs (more about her awesome quilts in another post). I haven't used the chalk line yet. It's just like the chalk line my Dad used to mark things he was fixing around the house. But I have used the iron off chalk and the small marker. The chalk is like magic. I used it on dark blue fabric to mark quilting lines and once I ironed over them they totally disappeared. The marker has a little wheel in the tip that applies the magic chalk. Reading about this doesn't compare to seeing it work. When the demonstrator ironed away white lines on black fabric, I was sold again.
I can't wait to try the rest of my new toys!
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