Friday 27 October 2017

Handiquilter Ruler of the Month Club - the Swiss Cheese Ruler

Another month has gone by...

This month we were introduced to the Swiss Cheese Ruler
The ruler has three different sizes of circles, i.e. 1/4in, 3/4in and 1 1/4in.

This was a bit of fun playing around with this.
First tried just fitting the circles within lines...not that easy if you have trouble being exact in putting your lines down, but again, I think this is only practice. The circles are easy to do. If you look at the ruler you will notice the opening...in the Westalee rulers they insert a little piece to close that gap. With the HQ rulers that gap can be distracting as the foot sinks slightly into it and creates a bit of a notch. However, if you slow down a bit at that point and concentrate this is not much of an issue and even if you get a bit of a notch it is hardly noticeable.
I did try the 1/4in circles which are tiny, tiny...while they do create beautiful little pearls on a practice piece, I had problems fitting them nicely into my lined up 1/4in space. Personally  I think it is easier to do them freehand. The other two sizes are great though as you will not be able to keep it nice and straight if you were to do them freehand.
The square next to it has the orange peel design done with the 3/4in circle. For that I drew a grid in the square first and put my circles neatly into each square and then completed the overlapping circles. That worked really well and is a good way of doing this design at that size.
Next I did just lines with alternate circles, again at the 3/4in size. 
Really like this design...I used the straight edge of the Slice Ruler to give me a straight line and then just switched to the circles in between. I think I did draw a loose grid in the background first to keep my orientation straight.
And another one
Filled in some of the 1 1/4in circles as this is what they showed on the Handiquilter website. Thought initially that this was quite boring but actually looks really interesting. If you have them all lined up in a border and fill every alternative one, this could look quite good.

Overall really like this ruler as the circles are small enough to be used in blocks, sashings and borders in a variety of ways. While small I know from experience that no matter how careful you are to follow a drawn line, you will not achieve a tidy round circle freehand even at the 3/4in size. The 1/4in circle however is just a tad too small for me and unless I figure out how to align it precisely I probably prefer to do those little pebbles freehand.

Karin

1 comment:

  1. Nice job, I can see you are enjoying it! I have a circle ruler from Quilter's Rule that I love to use, works in basically the same way.

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