How To Cut Fabric Correctly for the Sasher Tool

[Music] hello i'm pauline from pauline's quilter's world and i'm here to talk to you about cutting your fabric to put through the sacher tool i'm going to cut some fabric on the straight grain and put it through the one inch tool and then i'm going to cut some fabric on the bias and put it through the quarter inch tool just so you can get a really close visual on how these tools work just in case you're a person that's having a problem but the the main factor i need to explain to you if your fabric is not cut the right measurement the tool can't do its job properly so i just want to go over how we should be cutting our fabric so i've just got a fat quarter here that i'm going to work off now i always fold my fabric into four so i'm just going to turn my fabric take it the edges together i'm going to align the edges and make sure it's all nice and straight it's got a little bit of a twist and don't ever trust your fabric that's been cut to be straight so we're just going to level this up oops get my fingers in there we'll level it up so it drapes nicely on the fold then we'll fold it again so there's my fabric all folded and i usually just give it a little press that'll just make it sit there nicely for us then i'm going to go to my cutting mat which i usually work use the three-in-one workboard i love working with these now when you fold your fabric up small you've only got a little shortcut which makes it so much easier but check your rulers before you start cutting i find that there's a lot of rulers out there that cannot quite be accurate make sure that your inch lines on your ruler are thin lines you don't want them to be too thick because they can put your measurement out particularly if you cut on this side of the line and then turn your ruler and cut on the other side of the line you could be four to five threads out that means that the fabric won't fold through the tool as it should because it's a little bit short in its measurement so i designed these my rulers the precision quilt wonder rulers and i know all the lines are exactly true to measurement it has been engraved deep into the back of the ruler you can hear the noise that engraving helps hold the fabric the ruler to the fabric without any slipping so we're going to put the ruler down you don't have to put a lot of pressure on it just light pressure i use the little tiny 18 millimeter cutter because it sits against the ruler beautifully and i find when i'm using a big blade a couple of things can happen one is that i can run up onto the ruler and blunten the blade very very quickly the other thing when i'm cutting with a big blade as you're cutting you can notice your fabric starts to move ahead of the blade i find the bigger the blade the bigger the rotation the more distortion i get which can put you out in your measurement so hold your hand slightly on the ruler use the little cutter and we just cut and that little blade cuts through your four layers beautifully now i'm going to use the one inch sacher tool so now using whatever tool you're going to use whatever measurements written on the top of the tool you'll cut your fabric double that measurement that's the only measurement you need to remember so we're going to need to cut our fabric two inches wide we're going to align one of these lines across the top of the fold there this line will be exactly on the edge of the fabric and it doesn't matter if your ruler is accurate doesn't matter whether that line sits on the inside edge of your fabric or the outside edge of the fabric you'll be one thread thickness so i will now cut so you just go along and you'd cut off as many strips as you need now if i'm going to cut my fabric on the bias i'm just going to put this strip aside we'll put it through the tool in a moment to cut on the bias i'm going to open the fabric out and to cut my bias because i want to go around really really tight curves i want to be on the true bias so i use the bias sasha ruler this is the ruler i've designed with all of these diagonal lines on it to keep me on the true true bias what i'm going to do is put one of these diagonal lines running up the ruler i'm going to put it on one of the right angle corners the line going the opposite way i'm going to put on the other right angle corner so we'll lay this down now hopefully you can see that this line line's running parallel along this top edge of the fabric let's just line it up properly this one's aligned along this edge of the fabric so now i know i'm on the true true bias so i will cut across here i just have to move this fabric onto the board a bit more so i don't run off and i love using the little three in one workboard it just makes it so easy particularly if we work in a small space so now we'll cut that corner piece off so there's our bias cut now you can cut your strips across here if you wish but i find folding the fabric so i'm aligning this straight edge with this straight edge lining them up properly and fold again so now we have a very very short cut so this is our straight grain running down here we will place one of the lines on our ruler along this straight edge now a little tip with cutting your fabric on the bias i find that sometimes when i cut my measurement for my bias strips once i cut it and put it in the tool and start to put the hot iron on it some fabrics do do shrink and that causes a problem because it won't fold through the tool properly do a little bit of a test on your fabric and see if it shrinks up because if it shrinks you need to cut it a little bit bigger i know this fabric when i put the hot iron on it it does shrink in a little bit so when i cut my strip i'm going to cut it just over the half inch i'm going to put it through the quarter inch tool this is the tool i'll put it through the quarter inch so i'm going to cut the fabric just a smidgen wider than the half inch and that'll help allow for the shrinkage so my tool will fold it over perfect so just go ahead and cut your bias strips and it's a very short cut and you get no distortion so now let's come back and make some of our strips so we'll make the one inch strip first so we've cut the fabric two inches wide we're going to fold both of the sides in till they meet now if you want to be exactly in the middle you might want to fold it in half first and just finger press that center point so you know where to fold back to on each side and then just with your eye just press about the first inch to two inches that keeps it folded neatly for you so you can thread it into the tool so we come up and back down if i hadn't pressed it it probably would have wanted to pop open it wouldn't have gone in there straight which will then cause me problems when i start to iron pull it through a little bit then we use the lit the double fork pin the twin pin and we're going to pin so that each side of the pin catches each side of this fabric now that's going to apply equal tension onto that fabric so i get no stretching because if your fabric stretches as you iron it won't stay folded properly so now cup up the sides just hold the sides up you're not going to want to fold them in you just want to cut them up this little curve here is designed to fit the side of any iron i love to use a little mini iron and i just push along so it takes no effort at all so after you've done about 12 inches run the iron back over the strip to keep plenty of heat in there to keep the fold remove your pin reposition the pin come back cup up the sides and push so just guide it a little bit by cupping up the side because your fabric will want to twist and move then you get a perfect perfect strip of fabric now when we do the fabric on the bias we do the same thing put the fabric on the ironing surface with the wrong side facing up to you we're going to fold the ends in and this can be a bit tricky because it's very very narrow piece of fabric if it doesn't fold perfectly to the middle don't worry this would be a little bit of waste because it won't be the right measurement but it at least it's going to get you into the tool hold the tool by the handle now when we put these narrow strips into the tool we need to have it so that the fold is facing down to the ironing surface not facing up turn it over so the fold is facing down you put it into the tool go back down in that hole once again pin with your fantastic double pin hold the fabric so it's nice and straight now it's because it's on the bias you don't want to stretch it you just want to hold it so it stays nice and straight you can put your fingers underneath so it lifts lifts off the ironing surface a little bit put the iron against the tool and you just push and there you have your perfect bias strip mate so because i know that fabric does shrink a tiny little bit by cutting it that little bit bigger when we look at the back it has now folded to me absolutely perfect so that's just a few little hints and tips on how to use my fantastic sasha tools very proud of them they're designed and made in australia they are the original tools we do have people copying us and we don't want that to happen to you we want you to have the original tool so please go to our website www.pqw.com and you can purchase from there and do subscribe to our regular newsletter and also have a look at our youtube channel subscribe to that so when you um hit that bell you'll get notifications when we've got a new video for you so thanks for joining have fun creating [Music]

Channel: Pauline's Quilters World

Views: 2,425

Rating: 4.7647057 out of 5

Keywords: Pauline's Quilters World, pqw, quilting, pauline rogers, sasher tools, sashers, quilt as you go techniques, bias, bias maker

Id: 3dnDgpAhb5E

Length: 11min 19sec (679 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 29 2020