Hey Everyone, welcome back to Cool Tool Thursday.

Have you ever had problems getting those half square rectangles to line up just right and not look totally out of whack? Which corner is suppose to hang over and on what side. I suspect all of us have asked this questions a time or two. I tend to stay away from them as I always have issues getting them to sew together and look nice.

Now with this ruler from Creative Grids called the Perfect Rectangle Ruler I no longer need to steer clear of the half square rectangles. With this ruler the half square rectangles turn out perfect every time. The ruler can be used to make half square rectangles from 1 inch to 9 inches. The width of the rectangles is half of the height. For example a rectangle 8 inches high will be 4 inches wide.

To begin, cut the strips of fabric the size you want the height of the rectangle to be plus a ½″ for the seam allowance. I have cut my two strips 8 inches. I have used 2 different colours for contrast and to have even greater contrast I used complementary colours of red and green. The finished rectangle will be 7 ½″ by 3 ¾″.

Place the strips of fabric on the mat with right sides facing up. Make sure the strips are aligned evenly and one edge is squared off.

Place fabric strips on top of each other with right side of fabric facing up

Place the vertical edge of the ruler along the edge of the fabric with the 8 inch line aligned with the bottom edge of the fabric. The blunt edge of the ruler will align with the top edge of the fabric.

Align 8 inch line of ruler on bottom of fabric strip and the blunt point at the top of the fabric strip

Cut along the slanted side of the ruler.

Cut along the slanted edge of the ruler for the first cut

Make sure to cut along the little angle next to the blunt top of the ruler.

Trim off little triangle corner at the top

Flip the ruler over and repeat. The slanted edge of the ruler will be aligned with the diagonal edge of the fabric just cut.

For second cut align the ruler with the slanted edge of the fabric

Align like this for sewing.

Align with blunt corner even with bottom triangle

The pieces when put together will look like this.

Pieces fit together perfectly

To create a mirror image flip the strips over so that the wrong side of the fabric is facing up.

Mirror image.

The Perfect Rectangle Ruler from Creative Grids is a great tool to help with making half square rectangles – no more math to figure out, no more templates to make and no more ripping out due to poor alignment.

Tune into Stash Blasting Wednesday next week to see what I have made with this cool tool and make sure to enter the give away.

Happy Quilting!

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