Ride the Wave with Me~~~~~~

This is my new best friend: June Tailor and her Fancy Frame Ruler . (She has nice nails) Every quilt I make, I say to myself: Self, you need to get some new skills and try out that scalloped ruler. But I put it off because I'm afraid to do the math. Confession Number 72: I'm not very academically inclined. Corrie Dawn is. I'm not even sure what that really means, but I'm sure some insensitive adult said that to me once and it's stuck. So for this quilt, I went with the lesser of two evils....the wave. I'm sure I should have thought more about the mathematics of it all, but I decided to throw care to the wind and go forth with faith. I shall now tell you how I accomplished said feat.

Fancy Frame Ruler: One side is for scallops.(scary Rated R part) There are 4 different sizes you can choose from. And I'm sure with a calculator and a little mathmatical genius, you will be able to scallop your way to success. But that's for another day. The OTHER side is for a wave.(June is showing us the wave side) I went with the wave. The ruler is such that you can just use your rotary cutter and 'ride the wave'. I decided to use the 'wave' to mark my quilt first with my handy blue water soluble pen, to see how the corners would match up. I went around the whole quilt lining up the edge of the ruler about 1/4" in from the edge.

Corners: I just placed a dinner plate on each corner, again lining it up 1/4" from the edge, traced around it about half the circle and then fudged a little to meet and match up with the wave ruler markings. This is fudging. Once it was marked, and the corner and wavy sides met up okay, I cut on the blue line with my scissors. Blue pen will dissolve with water. Whether you wash it in washer or spritz with spray bottle. It WILL go away.


I thought I was going to have to do some major thinking and rearranging. Guess what? I didn't. It just totally worked. I have no idea why. But it looks fabulous. Each corner may not be exactly like the others but you cannot even tell. And believe me, it if was YOUR quilt, I'd be checking out your corners. I would not be able to tell. I folded it up to see if my corners were all different and dorky and HELLO?? it looks like I spent hours figuring this all out. Honestly, people. Don't be afraid of waves. Even on an overcast day in Idaho, the waves are 'bombin'! (yes, I just googled surfer slang and I find that there are quite a few parallel's to surfing and making waves on borders) Scallops..........well, that's a marine mollusk and I'm still not going there yet, but maybe someday.
With any type of curve you will need to do a bias binding. Lots and lots of places on the world wide web for instructions to make your own. Hmmm....I think I'll have to show you sometime how I do my bias tape. I love it! Or better yet, take your quilt to the store and BUY already made bias tape to match.


Good Luck! If I can do it, so can you. It was fun and now I'm going to put waves on EVERYTHING!!~~
UPDATE:6/14/08 My friend was able to find this ruler at her local Joann's for $17.99 US.