Dusty's rulers

When I was in Houston I bought two sets of rulers from Dusty and folks asked if I would put up a review of them when I had tried them. I have now, so here goes.

Firstly the cute packaging is also useful. I can hang the bags from their drawstrings and keep a whole set on one hook, neat. I am also using them for storing my cunning pin catchers but more on those another day.

The set I have spent most time with are the radical rulers. Their first outing was a baby quilt for a regular customer. She doesn't mind if I play and a baby won't critique my quilting. I used the 4 way cross shaped ruler to do the borders, with the gothic arch look. It wasn't perfect, I don't use rulers much so that is to be expected but it was acceptable. If you look on you tube you will find some video of him demonstrating them and the border I tried was one he shows.

I did find the ruler a lot easier to hold than most I've tried. It's a really good size, big enough to be usefull small enough to he held stable easily. I then had to quilt Tet's Christmas present to his mum. It has a lot of applique on it that had to be stitched around. I grabbed my trusty straight ruler and the went hunting for something to use on the curves. Three of the radical rulers got pressed into service. The two arches and the 4 way. Between them they had something close to every arc I needed and were all easy to hold. It wasn't what they were designed for, but they are very very good at it. So much so I've done tons of stitch in the ditch (something I normally won't do) on two sampler quilts as well.

I still need more time to play with the rulers and the other set I bought, but so far I am a very happy camper. These have changed the way I look at ruler work completely. I've also started using my leader grip side clamps. They are much easier to open and close than I had expected, which is good and I love the way the hold the backing. The leader grips for loading quilts are waiting to go on the new frame when it arrives, which will be a while yet because I wanted it customising. I know, typical, but hey if you are going to spend that much you might as well get it right.