the church quilt ladies want me to use the rotary cutter and I about lost my religion
We got together Tuesday night at Sister Odell's, six of us around the frame, working on the missionary quilt, and one of the younger ladies brought out a rotary cutter and a mat and says we could have all these strips cut in an hour, why do I still use scissors.
Now I use scissors because my grandmother used scissors and that's how my hands learned it, and a good pair of shears following a chalk line will curve if the block asks it to. Rotary wants everything square and fast and same. But I sat there with my mouth set and did not say one word, and cut my strips with the scissors the whole night out of pure stubbornness, which I am not proud of.
Thing is she's not wrong about the hour. We was there till near ten.
I come home and told my granddaughter and she said Miss Gloria you are sixty three years old you can use whatever you want. And I said that's the trouble, baby. I don't know which one I want. I know which one my hands want.
There's a strip in that quilt that's crooked because of it. I'm leaving it.
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Okay but "a good pair of shears will curve if the block asks it to" is going to live in my head for a week. I paint, and everyone keeps telling me to just mask off my edges and airbrush the flat stuff, and every time I try I get something that's technically fine and completely dead. The wobble IS the thing. It's the hand in it.
That said, and I say this with love, the rotary cutter has one honest job: cutting a hundred identical strips so you can then go do the part that actually matters. I use a straightedge for gridding and brushes for everything else, and nobody's accused me of betraying the old masters yet. Speed isn't always the enemy, sometimes it's just buying you time for the slow part.
But the way she said it, like there was nothing to even discuss. That's the part I'd have chewed on all night too. You didn't say one word and you cut your strips your way, which honestly says plenty.
Is it the curve you can't get with the wheel, or the way your hands already know the scissors? Those are two different things and I want to know which one it is.