Natalia Bonner's 4n1 Ruler

I gave my new 4n1 Mini ruler (top ruler) another whirl the other day.

Really like this ruler...it is a bit chunky but I have found this to be quite an advantage. Lies really good in your hand feeling very solid and stable. If you are still looking for a good allrounder, this is a good ruler to go for as it has curves of different sizes plus the straight edge all on the same ruler. Lots of things you can do with that.

Stitched out some of the designs from Natalia's 9 Patch Quiltalong 2.0 that I have seen popping up over the last few weeks on the internet.

Very enjoyable little exercise. Particularly like the simple star design in the second row. Definitely something I will use in a quilt. Find this ruler particularly uncomplicated, as there are a lot of lines that you can align to your seams for reference and like how you can quickly flick this from the straight edge to the curved edges doing a block in just one go. The size of this ruler is a real advantage in that it carries you easily across a 4in block in all directions. Nothing worse than when you ruler falls short of the distance and you have to slide it over...that hardly ever works out neatly for me.

I think this ruler will become a favourite in no time at all.

Karin

Rulers!

This time I am innocent...I won a $50 gift voucher at the Great International Craft Show that was run here online from 16-19/9, so I had to spent it...

Had a choice where I wanted to spent it, so I chose Constantine Quilts, a local business that supplies a range of products for machine quilting. 

Bought two new rulers

On top, the Natalia Bonner 4n1 Mini ruler and underneath a 90 degree angle ruler made by Constantine Quilts. So, I gave them a whirl today...

Was really curious about the Natalia Bonner ruler as I have heard a lot of good things about it. It is quite large at a width of 4.75in and length of 7in which worried me a bit in terms of being able to hold it steady.

My efforts for today

Natalia's ruler was used for the top two rows. Must say, I like it...the squares are 4in and the size of the ruler makes going over it a breeze, even on the diagonal. I had a good grip on the ruler, initially a bit awkward due to its chunkiness, but I got used to it rather quickly and can see why Natalia developed this. It is so easy to quickly flick this in all directions working the straights and the curves all in one go. I particularly liked the lines with the measurements on it...saved me getting a ruler out to mark my dots of where I wanted to go. That was a bit handy in terms of quickly marking the center of a block.

The 90 degree ruler is Constantine Quilts' own ruler line. Good value at an affordable price. I have wanted to get a 90 degree ruler for a while for simple line work. Stitched out the chevron border with ease...the 'legs' of the ruler are 6in, so it is a good size to use for medium borders, quickly and simply putting in the zig-zag. Also tried it out for piano keys and really liked using it for that as I could just slide it along, aligning it at a right angle to the 'bottom' of the quilt. It was very accurate. Then I did some pretend echos you might do in a block...again, very easy as it stops you in the right spot. After all this I was just mucking around trying to finish off my bobbin...tried Natalia's smallest curves on the right side of the ruler. That actually did not work that well for me. Found the alignment tricky and hard to judge, probably not a part that I would be using a lot. Maybe for really small squares...

Good fun, happy with my purchase.
 

Karin