Havel's Fabric and Quilt Ruler Cutter

Havel's gave me a Fabric and Quilt Ruler Cutter to try. It's a rotary cutting ruler, with a handle for the rotary cutting blade built in.

I like it very much. I'm left handed, so the samples you'll see might look backwards, but I wanted to show you why I like it.

Although I have several Accuquilt strip dies, and love them, there are times when I want to use a rotary cutter and ruler.

 Normally, when I cut strips for a quilt, I "clean" off the raw edge across the width of the fabric, to set up for making strips that are perfectly straight. This involves laying the fabric on my cutting mat, lining up the ruler and making a small cut across the width of the fabric.

There are different ways of using rotary rulers, but I like to line up the cut edge of the fabric with the marking on the ruler that matches the strip width I want. In other words, the ruler is covering the fabric that I want to cut off, and the main body of the fabric is uncovered.  This is the way I learned about 28 years ago, I can do it quickly.








I want to clean off the right edge of this piece of fabric before cutting strips.

In this picture, the main fabric is to the left, with the strip I want to cut off just to the right edge of the cutter. This would be how a right hander would use the ruler to clean off the edge. I can do this too, because I don't have to HOLD the cutter, I can use my left hand to stabilize the ruler, and then my right to push the cutter along that metal edge.

Now I've cut the wobbly strip off, and I can proceed to cut the rest of my strips WITHOUT having to move the fabric. 

To cut the strips, I line up the edge of the fabric, here I'm using the 1 1/2" line, and run the blade up along the edge of the ruler. The ruler is covering  the 1 1/2" strip, making it stable while I cut. If you are right handed, you would be using the opposite side.

  

And here we have the cut strip. To cut more, I line up the desired width with the line on the ruler, run the cutter up the metal strip and I've got another strip.

You can do this with a regular rotary cutter and ruler, but you have to flip the fabric around between the cleaning off strip and the quilt strips. And you have to get some practice running the cutter along the edge of the ruler.

Here's a link to the ruler if you are interested

And here's the quilt I made: Fancy Foxes, from Elizabeth Hartman's pattern. The strips were going to be the noses, but I switched it to black which made for a better quilt, but not such a good tute.