Add Sandpaper to Your Quilting Toolbox

If you're a quilter and mark your stitching line for hand piecing, you know how important it is make that mark accurately for every piece of your project so that your points will match up nicely.  You also know that it's not always easy to do, especially when marking small pieces of fabric that will slide around under your ruler on your cutting board.

One simple tool that can help you make more accurate stitching lines is a simple piece of fine grit sandpaper.  You can buy a ready-made sandpaper board, but I'll bet you have some sandpaper on hand somewhere in your house, garage, or work shed, and could make your own very easily by attaching the sandpaper to one side of a piece of plywood.  If you have a small cutting mat that you use to trim pieces of your blocks, you could affix the sandpaper to the underside of that, as long as you cut the sandpaper the same size as the mat so that it remains stable and doesn't wobble or cause the mat to warp.

I've been doing a lot of hand-piecing since I'm still displaced to a hotel from the hurricane, and find the sandpaper trick very helpful, but it can also be useful for those who use templates to trace applique designs.  If your fabric should shift at all while tracing around the template, it could really distort the design, so set your fabric on the sandpaper first, then place the template on top and trace.  The fine grit of the sandpaper will be just enough to hold the fabric in place.

Wonder what else you could find in the workshop to help with your quilting?

 ~ Marie Anne

P.S.  The little Jinny Beyer Perfect Piecer ruler you see in the photo has been a blessing for marking accurate 1/4" seam lines also.