Marking Tip

I cut most of my fabric pieces for quilting with my AccuQuilt Machine or a rotary cutter and mat but I heard a great tip today that will come in handy the next time I need to mark a piece to be cut by hand. Someone remembers this tip being given on a television show several years ago.

The idea is to hold two sharpened pencils together with rubberbands and trace your pattern for cutting.  One pencil would trace the cutting line and the other pencil would mark a line ¼" inside the cutting line which would be the sewing line or the turn-under line for applique.  What a great idea.

I'm going to experiment a little with this method for marking fabric.  I think this may also work for marking the cutting line and sewing lines for Half Square Triangles and for marking lines for echo quilting (quilting ¼" from a block or design then quilting ¼" from the quilting,  repeat).  This also might make a good training tool for someone having a difficult time making straight ¼" seams.

This is a very simple yet clever idea!!!  Thinking about this neat trick brought back some memories to me.  When I was in grade school (yes, I can still remember that far back!!!) we used to tape two pencils together when we had to write lines or write our spelling words or multiplication facts for practice --- this allowed us to write two lines at once!!

Happy Quilting,
Laurel