Ruler Recycle - A Quilters Upcycle

Quilting makes me happy - most of the time, and all quilters have their favorite tools, the same as anyone who builds anything!  I have a favorite hammer and saw in the greenhouse and my favorite nippers in the "you've got mail" box in the yard for easy access.  I have (had) a favorite ruler in the sewing room that was my "go to" for cutting and basically all things measuring.  It was an "OmniGrid" ruler 6&1/2" x 13" and had all the angles, bells and whistles!  The main lines are yellow and the others are black  I like it because for my eyes, it lets me easily see the line I am trying to use.

But.....alas, good things always come to an end it seems and this one I accidentally ran over with my rotary cutter and took a big gouge out of the side of it.  Usually when this happens, I am able to sand it a bit and take out any little catches, but this was a gouge beyond sanding - there was no recovery!

So I did what all great quilters do - I made do and got a new one!  It's actually the one in the picture above, and is the same size but not exactly the same grid lines as the old one.  I also made do and got the shop teacher at the school to help me "make do" and upcycle/recycle the old gouged ruler!

I have been working on a project (that you will see soon) that needs a center square of 4 &1/2" for one part of it, and for some reason I have 6 squares that are 6-8" (not really but it seems like a lot of them), and not one that was the size that I needed!  I also use 1 &1/2" strips and squares of fabric to make projects (you will see some of those soon as well), and I needed a 1 &1/2" ruler for that too.

And so......Ta Da!  The shop teacher was able to cut 4 new (ish) rulers out of that old one and make me a 1&1/2" strip ruler, a 4&1/2" square, a 3&1/2" square and a 4" square - because - who doesn't need all of those sizes?

The shop teacher may have been able to get more out of it but he had to work around the gouged part so that limited how much of the ruler we could recycle.

Now I have just about exactly what I need ruler wise - there are never too many rulers - and I made use of something that might have otherwise gone just in the dumpster!

I you get in a bind and gouge your ruler, take it to the local school and see if the shop teacher cant help you make it new again!  Or if you have a "handy" person in your life - they can help too!

Happy quilting/crafting and blessed be!