The Bee in my Bonnet Thimble Ruler...and another free pattern!!!

Introducing...

"Jump Rope"

another free pattern from me to you!

(Happy Valentine's Day to all of you 

sweetie pie readers out there...

I heart every one of you:)

(you can download it HERE)

I made this quilt using my 

Thimble Rulers 

along with 5" and 10" squares:)

I know that this shape is now called a 

"tumbler"...

 but my grandma and her sisters used to 

call it a thimble...

 and that's what I went with!

And yes...

More gratuitous photos of my kids.

Sorry for the shadows on the quilt:)

Obviously I took these at the same time 

as my Honeycomb quilt that I showed you yesterday:)

Still a windy day and trying to get a full shot of the quilt was a challenge:)

As you can see...there are two sizes of Thimble shapes in the quilt...

Sewn together top to bottom in strips.

When you sew two small thimbles together...

they are the same size as one large thimble...

making the possibilities endless!

I called the quilt "Jump Rope" because the strips reminded me of the jump ropes I used to play with at recess with all the girls.

You know the kind...

they were made of kind of colorful elongated hard plastic beads?

This quilt is super fast to cut and sew up.

Again...

I used my fabric lines all mixed together 

and 

I used yardage and 4 fat quarters 

for the back of this one.

I don't know if you can see the binding...

but it's scrappy too!

I used up leftover 2 1/2" strips by sewing them together for the binding.

Jump Rope makes a great lap quilt and 

I think it would make a fun and easy baby quilt too!

Let's talk a little bit about different ways that you can use the rulers.

I'll show you a few variations using the small ruler.

I rotary cut this thimble from a 5" square.

Easy peasy.

You can cut several...flip them around and sew them into rows.

OR...

You can sew 4 squares together...

In this case 2 1/2" size...

Line up the lines on the ruler 

 with your seam lines ...

And cut a scrappy Thimble!!!

Then you can alternate with scrappy and plain if you want:)

You can also cut  two different 5" squares in half and sew the strips together...

Line up with the center line on the ruler...

And cut.

And sew into rows this way.

These are just a few possibilities...

you could also flip the ruler and cut so that the different fabric strips 

are on each side of the thimble instead of on the top and bottom.

And for the ends of each row...

Place 2 - 2 1/2" x 5" strips with wrong sides together...

line up with the center line of the ruler and cut at the same time so that you have one in reverse...

Like this.

Or simply cut a thimble shape in half.

Sew them onto the ends of the rows so that they

 end up straight and not slanted!

YaY!!!

This makes it soooo much easier to bind:)

You can do the same thing using the large rulers and four 5" squares sewn together like I did in my Jump Rope quilt.

See what I mean?

lots of possibilities with these rulers.

A good way to play with pre-cuts and also to use up those 

extra strips and squares that we all seem to accumulate:)

And now that my rulers are here I will be using them a lot ...

I have several tutorials planned using all of them...

so stay tuned my friends...and have a quilty week end!!!

xx

Lori