Pathways Ruler

There are just 30 hours to go on our Handmade Getaway Kickstarter! We were 100% funded on day ten and quickly came up with our ultimate stretch goal of running the first edition in hardcover if we reach $75K. We are just $9K short of the goal at this moment and the suspense is killing me! We are giving these last hours all we’ve got to see if we can rally a bit more support to make this hardcover dream happen for all our wonderful backers.

Over the next while, I’m going to be featuring some of the projects that I designed for Handmade Getaway. I’ve decided to start with the Double Time Quilt. I can’t wait to share all the stories behind each of our projects and this one really captures why our getaways are so amazing. I’ll also be sharing many photos that don’t appear in the book here. I’ve got about 9,600 photos all related to Handmade Getaway at this point!

It was one of our winter getaways a few years ago. Jacqueline brought along a cool ruler she picked up at a trade show that she thought we should play with. It happens a lot that at least one of us will bring along some cool tool or kit for us all to explore together. It makes for a fun afternoon of figuring things out as a group, getting inspired by something we’ve never tried before. This particular ruler is called the Pathways Ruler by Sew Many Creations and it is a multi-sized Drunkard’s Path and square up ruler. We were very intrigued.

It was the last day and we had already sewn all kinds of fun things – quilts, clothes, and more quilts. I always find that these weekends or weeks are the ideal time for me to focus on a quilt project. I have some quilts that have only ever been worked on at our getaways. As usual, Katherine had brought a garbage bag of fabric. Truly. Katherine’s stash is epic! She knew she wanted to start a new quilt, but didn’t know what that was going to be. We sat down together, pulled out the instructions and gave the ruler a try. Once we figured out how it worked, we were so excited by how quickly, accurately and economically we could cut out the drunkard path pieces. No tracing, no template, just a few rotary cuts on the ruler and we had perfectly sized pieces ready to go. Katherine was convinced this could be the quilt project she was looking for. I wanted to join in! We decided to share fabric. She picked half the fabrics from her travelling stash and I picked the other half from my own bag of fabric. We each cut out two sets of each of our fabrics and then traded with the other. Our quilts have exactly the same fabrics, but we went away from that weekend and started putting them together individually. We paired up all the fabrics on our own and made our own personal layouts for them. We worked on them at several getaways, you can see them progress from summer to winter in these photos. I love the results.

Here’s another reason why this project is so cool – we cut out both quilts in about an hour! That’s 160 curved pieces per quilt for a total of 360 perfectly cut curved pieces. So good. Thank you, Pathways Ruler!

This is the magic that makes this time together so special. I love so much that now Katherine & I have matching quilts with a twist. Matching is one of our favourite things to do! In Handmade Getaway, we give you all the instruction you need to make your own Double Time Quilt with a two, three or four people. I think the idea of sharing fabric like this is so much fun.

Of course, we had to create a Kickstarter level based on this project. We’re so delighted that many of you have chosen the Double Time Quilt Tools Level. You’ll be getting two copies of Handmade Getaway, the fabulous Pathways Ruler and a stack of ten fat quarters. We had fabric generously donated from Robert Kaufman, Andover Fabrics and Camelot Fabrics to create three different options for you. There are still some of these rewards available if you haven’t pledged yet or want to upgrade to a higher level. This is all you need to get started on this project with a friend and I hope you’ll share your Double Time Quilts once you start making them! Visit our Kickstarter Page!