So I decided to buy a pinking blade for my rotary cutter, and am I ever glad I did! This is the first time I've made a quilt that didn't have ten thousand little threads hanging off the back of it, as you can see from the photos below. Works like a charm and I'll never go back to regular blades.

This is a baby quilt that I made this weekend. I make them to have on hand to give to co-workers, and also to practice as I am a relatively new quilter. I'm not really pleased with this one, though (but not because of the pinking blade, because of the fabric combination). I'll post a picture of the front once I finish quilting it.

interesting, I never thought of that

I bought one a few months ago to trim edges before prewashing--never thought of using it to cut pieces--is it hard to keep your 1/4" seam?

How much of a seam allowance did you use?

I used 1/4 inch, same as always, and it turned out great. I wanted to try it with a small quilt first, and I'm sold! No problem maintaining the 1/4 inch. As it leaves little saw tooth edges on the fabric, I noticed when sewing two pieces together that you will never get your "teeth" to match up, but it doesn't matter, they can be uneven, as it doesn't effect the final work.

And, there are not ten thousand threads stuck to my clothes and all over my dining room and kitchen floors, either! (Longing for the day when I can build a proper sewing room...*sigh*).

Interesting! Thanks for posting. Can't wait to see the front of your quilt.

Did you use a ruler? Wouldn't a pinking blade have to cut with it's inside edge against the ruler so the piece would end up larger than if you cut with a straight blade? Or are you somehow measuring the seam allowance from the inside edge of the cut?

I really seem to have an issue with fabric fraying. If this is the solution to stop those threads, I'm buying a pinking blade tomorrow. Thanks for the tip!

It's definitely worth a try !!

Yes, I used a ruler to cut my fabric. The pinking blade is a zig-zag, so part of the rotary (the "zig" part) butts up against the ruler when cutting, and part of it (the "zag" part) is a few millimetres away from the side of the ruler. The "zig" part hits the ruler in the same place that a conventional rotary cutter abutts the ruler.

When I was sewing the 1/4" seams, I used the outermost part of the cut fabric to align my seam to. There are parts of the fabric that are, indeed, a bit smaller than the edge, and that part is closest to the machine needle. The outermost part of the fabric edge is still closest to the right hand side of the machine, in the same manner as a conventionally cut, straight-line fabric would be. I aligned my 1/4" seam using the outermost edge. By doing so, my 6" blocks turned out to be perfectly 6.5" before I sewed all the blocks together.

I use Triangulations to made half-square triangles - see a demo of this at http://www.connectingthreads.com/tut...ideo__D30.html - and when I cut them apart I used pinking shears just to see if it would be any different than using my pinking blade on the rotary cutter - it's not.

This is why I'm now sold on cutting everything using a pinking blade.