About Us - Template Techniques
Hello and welcome to my website,
My name is Shirley Gendreizig and I grew up in Indiana where my father farmed and my mother was a secretary. I live in the foothills outside of Lyons, Colorado with my husband and our five cats and twenty-three chickens. My life in brief has comprised of being a postal employee, church organist and piano teacher but in addition I have been a lifelong avid quilter. I made my first quilt in 1970 when I was in high school.
If you’d like to see some samples of my work, please visit my photo gallery.
I am really glad you found my website and my product, “CATS” (Cut Accurate Triangle Squares), because if I didn’t think it was the absolute best way to make half-square triangles, I wouldn’t have bothered going into business at age 50!
Over the past 30 years that I have been involved with making quilts, I have tried different methods of making half-square triangles. I had already tried Marsha McClosky’s method of cutting extra-wide bias strips, and a specialty ruler that didn’t give straight grain edges to the finished product, and I was not ever a ‘paper piecing’ kind of gal, so I continued to mark grids for my half-square triangles.
When doing the same thing over and over thousands of times, one gets lots of time to think about how well the task is going. I would diligently mark a grid, trying to compute how thick my pencil lines were, so I would achieve perfect accuracy. Even though my grids became beautiful to behold, by the time I sewed quarter inch seams, the fabric would distort slightly with the first stitching, and when fully stitched, I could not use a straight edge to cut the half-square triangles apart. I would have to carefully cut them apart with scissors, and even then, they were not all that accurate. I was trying to construct a feathered star block per day, so frustration was increasing. Literally, I had a brain storm when trying to fall asleep. I thought, “The grid has to relate to the bias seam perfectly.”
What makes a perfect half-square triangle? It must be two perfect triangles already sewn together. If one would cut against a perfect sized triangular template next to the seam, it could be much more accurate. I kept cutting into my flimsy template, so I had the local machine shop make me one. Lo and behold it made my feathered star points so quickly and accurately that I began making two blocks a day and I also wondered why I hadn’t heard of this technique before.
It’s a tactile feeling akin to locking seams – you know when the template is next to the seam just like you know when your seams are locked and ready to sew. It takes the stress out of making half-square triangles because the accuracy is all in the template cutting. No need for extreme accuracy in marking or sewing, so relax and go for speed! You can even enjoy a glass of wine and cut accurate triangles.
Please take a moment to look through my site. We’ve tried to provide you with enough information and even a step by step demonstration to try and show you exactly how my technique can help you to create those triangle squares quickly and accurately.
Awards
April 2007 - Shirley Gendreizig won second place for her Guilt Quilt in the traditional category during the Mancuso Show at the "Denver National Quilt Festival II".
Testimonials from our customers
"Using CATS takes the guess work out of making half square triangles. Scrap quilts are a breeze with CATS. Shirley has already figured out all the math for whatever size you need, in whatever amount you need. After years of making do with points that were "okay" (blunted as often as not), now every one of them is perfect. They pass not only the three foot rule, but also the three inch rule!!! I can honestly say that after 24 years of quilting, I haven't had a product inspire my creativity this much since the rotary cutter came out. This product truly is the most universally versatile tool on the market. Any pattern that has a half square triangle in it can now be made faster and more easily.It's nice to know that perfect points are not a myth. They are possible, even by life long quilters who have tried every other technique. Thank you, Jenny Hubbard, Fort Collins, CO "
"I haven't been so excited about a tool in a long time. I intend to teach my next quilting class using CATS." Karen B., Black River Falls, WI
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