Creative Grids® Cat's Cradle Tool XL - CGRDH1XL

the cat's cradle block is made with one square two small triangles in a large triangle Deb Heather Lee has created two cat's cradle trim tools that make it possible to produce this block efficiently and effectively without ever having to cut any triangles there are two sizes this cat's cradle block does all the sizes from one-and-a-half inches all the way up to 4 inches the cat's cradle XL does all of the blocks from four and a half inches all the way up to an 8 inch finished block as you can see the cutting instructions are right on the tool so to make a block I'll actually be able to make two at once I cut two squares two rectangles and a large rectangle to create two blocks as you can see I'm never cutting any triangles so I love to make this block to start out I'm going to take my two squares and sew them to the two rectangles and then I put these together it's like making a four patch that doesn't have to match in the middle in fact if you make it match in the middle the block won't work so see that these are offset seams in the center I'm going to put those right sides together I'm always pressing away from my square and I'm going to sew a seam right here so here are my two units here is my offset for patch but to create the blocks I need to press my seams in opposite directions and that is very easy to accomplish because I am literally just going to fold this in half and take a little pair of scissors and I'll clip right past this seam I'm just going to slide it in there and I go a little past that seam so it will lay flat when I open it up the see that little clip allows me to press this seam in this direction in this seam in that direction now I take this block and I'm going to place it on my large rectangle on the tool itself it says right here we give you a little chichi it says mark the sewing line when I place this on my seam line so I'm going to take this line and place it on my seam line and I always place it a little inside of that just a tiny bit because by pressing these squares so they are flat I can see exactly where my seams cross here and I want to draw my line so it is crossing right there so all of my points will be perfect when I sew across those lines I go from the inside out so I don't have to worry about puckering when I get to that seam and that is going to be my sewing line I'm going to sew exactly on that line when I put it on the rectangle and that will create one block once again I'm placing this and I just go in just a hair probably the width of one thread so when I draw this line I'm allowing for the thickness of the pencil to draw this when I go out in both directions now I'm going to place that on top of my square or my rectangle and then I have a unit that looks like this I've sewn across both of those things and if you open it up you'll see that by sewing there I've created a large cat's cradle block this I can check my points right now and see by drawing right across where those seams intersected my points are going to be perfect if this is off a little bit and you see a white gap in there you don't have to tear out the seam I can just go back and take a little deeper seam and make sure that I cross right here this is the sweet spot now I'm going to cut a quarter of an inch away from those and so I can just take my rotary cutter there's a quarter inch seam allowance marked here and I'm going to cut I am left-handed so if you're right-handed you would do it the opposite way and rotate to trim a quarter of an inch away now if you notice there's just a tiny sliver left over so in reality do i trim a quarter of an inch away no normally I just cut between the two and I don't worry about that little sliver my seam allowance has already been determined because of my seam line so I don't care about this and but that's personal preference so now I'm going to take these to the ironing board and press towards the large triangle once that is done I have two cat's cradle units and now they're ready to trim to the exact size we're going to start using these nested squares right here I cut these units so I know that I am doing a finished size of six and a half inches the cat's cradle XL does all sizes from four and a half to eight inch finished and the first thing I do is trim the side that has the square on it there is a white line right here that has the six and a half inch mark right in the corner I take that and put it on these seam lines and then there's a dash line that goes across here by lining up all three of those I'm going to end up with a perfect block so I trim to size and if you notice I don't have to trim off the tails that were left on this corner because by trimming the block it's going to take care of that now I rotate the block and the second time I'm going to place it here but I'm going to use the same diagonal right there see that dash line and I'm going to place this little six and a half inch is going to be right there and there's a little square the point of this square touches the point of the square that's below it and the diagonal is right there if you also notice I'm just trimming it right there even with where the purple is on the outside edges so I always check to make sure because if everything is accurate this should be trimming the color away so that I have a perfect right angle and it looks like a half square triangle on each sides this is matching perfectly here that triangle is on there and when I trim this I'm going to have a perfect cat's cradle unit all my tails are gone it measures exactly six and a half inches so when I go to sew these together everything is going to match and everything is going to be perfect on the cat's cradle XL you can do sizes from four and a half inches to eight inch finished and here are the cutting instructions for all of the sizes so you have a little cheat sheet and you don't have to go back and find your instructions if you do happen to lose your instructions go to creative grids USA and you can download another set of instructions and watch a video whenever you need to as a little refresher enjoy the tool

Channel: CreativeGridsUSA

Views: 50,340

Rating: 4.889401 out of 5

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Id: qGQAyJc5lmg

Length: 8min 11sec (491 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 06 2018