Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Rulers are here!

We had a supply problem with our patternmaking rulers... just in time for the two "Patternmaking for Bags" courses... so once again I teased workshop participants with my snazzy equipment and couldn't offer any for sale.

WE NOW HAVE RULERS!!!

....SO... what's so snazzy about these rulers? If you're making patterns, these have lots of helpful bits on them. For starters, they're 60cm x 36cm - really useful when you have to draft long straight lines.


If you line up the first red line on the ruler with the stitch line on your pattern, you can rule a neat 6mm/quarter inch seam allowance (a quarter inch is 6.35mm.... so it's close enough in most cases).

The next line down gives you a 12mm seam allowance (my preferred seam allowance for most things).


And the line beneath that gives you a 15mm seam allowance.


The curve on the other side is perfect for drafting hip curves, waistlines, inner leg and .... various bag shapes.

And it also has the seam allowance depths on it.


NOTE: To add seam allowances on convex curves:
Match the chosen seam depth line with a point on the curve of your pattern and rule a short line. Move the ruler to follow the pattern curve with the seam depth marking, and keep ruling lots of short lines until they form a curved seam allowance.
(Do you need a tutorial in this ...or am I making sense here?).

If you're looking to invest in some proper patternmaking equipment, you can buy your ruler here .

IN OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS.....
It seems that to a lot of junk mail filters (including my own!) our emails are looking an awful lot like SPAM!! Please check your junk mail folders and UNJUNK anything from us. Add us to your "safe" list if you can.... We really are NOT SPAM.

3 comments:

A.Kaefer said...

For the dunces amongst us (looks sheepish) - yes, a tutorial would probably be helpful. :)

Unknown said...

Oh, it looks like you have something else I "need".

Allison said...

Thanks for the email Nikki.

See, the thing with some people (OK -- ME, the thing with me) is that everyone learns different. For instance, say if they (again -- it's me we are talking about here) are visual people. Sit me down with a pattern and a list of instructions and I get discombobulated and my knees turn to jelly.

But if I can SEE how something is done -- like in one of your classes, or a video tutorial, then those visuals stay with me and I can pull them up in my mind when I am working through a step in the pattern.

That's just how I work :)