Hey Everyone, welcome back to Cool Tool Thursday.

This weeks tool is another unusual one but can be very useful especially if your quilting space is not large. As we all know when designing, choosing fabrics and putting things together it is best to stand back about 10 feet to look at them. This gives you better perspective and the pieces then have dimension allowing us to see how they look together.

Standing back and away from the fabrics really helps with putting colours together as well and makes choosing much easier. If you have ever taken a class from Vikki Pignatelli she is a firm believer of this practice – 0ur design walls were no where near our work stations.

So what does the peep hole have to do with this whole process? Well, if you do not have a design wall and cannot stand back from your work then you can still get a distance perspective by using the peep hole or reducing glass which is what it is actually called. By looking through the peep hole, and yes it is just like the ones in the hotel room door, the piece is now set back a few feet.

In fact, I can still remember Michael shaking his head at me when I brought this tool home from the quilt shop one day. I was pretty excited about my new tool and then he saw what I paid for it all packaged up as a quilting tool. “You do realise that’s just a peep glass for a door, don’t you? All-be-it with a bit of tubing on the threads.” Sigh.

I definitely won this husband-wife quilting expense battle when he saw how well it worked for getting a step back view of my projects in our itty bitty little house. “Where’s that peep glass?” he’d say when I would ask his opinion on a fabric combination.

No room for a design wall, no worries. Place your pieces on the table or floor and stand over them with the reducing glass – this will give you the same result as standing 10 feet away from a design wall.

How we see the block on the table. Just flat with no dimension even though there are different values of colour the block still looks flat.

Block lying flat on the table with no dimension.

How we see the block through the peep hole. The block has a lot more dimension and you can see how the different values of colour work together.

The view of the block on the table through the peep hole – has more dimension to it.

An easy and inexpensive solution if you do not have room for a design wall and also great tool to take to class with you.

Coolness Factor – Quilts by Jen rates it 6 out of 10.

Usefulness Factor – Quilts by Jen rates it 10 out of 10.

Happy Quilting!