Cutter Quilt Ninny

More often than not, especially today, I feel like I am back in the stone age when it comes to quilting. It’s not just because I consider myself a quilt purist, (only hand quilting) I never owned a rotary cutter (bought my first 3 months ago) or pre-cut templates or quilting rulers; 60-degree triangle rulers, triangle square up ruler, strip wonky ruler, strip tube ruler, the types are endless, I was lost to the world of quilt lingo up until joining my first quilt along a year ago.

The quilt vocabulary I knew were backing, batting, and sashing. But more recently, in fact in this last week, I learned a new term; cutter quilt.

Who knew that the beautifully framed quilt square I did as a gift for Velma and one for myself came from using a cutter quilt, I didn’t. From a quilt not able to be saved I cut out two of the squares and repurposed them….I created this art piece from a cutter quilt.

It certainly makes perfect sense now. It did not make sense when trolling ebay for vintage quilts and I came across a number of these for sale. They were smaller sections of quilts and in the heading for the quilt for sale, the term cutter quilt was used. That seemed odd to me, my mind jumped instantly to a ‘cutter’ as in a boat. That didn’t make sense but I trolled on.

I eventually wrote to the poster of these beauties and asked her why these quilts were such an odd size and here was her reply.

New message from:   bayberrycottage  (631)

Good morning! These are quilt “pieces” for crafting, sewing and such. The sizes are the “cut” sizes, as they are cut from what are called “cutter” quilts. Thanks for your interest. Enjoy your weekend!

Now you may be thinking what a ninny, everyone knows this. In fact, I do feel like a ninny with a capital N.

Of course, it makes perfect sense. But in my defense and returning to the word cutter and boat here is the definition of a cutter:

Wikipedia says:

A cutter is typically a small, but in some cases a medium-sized, watercraft designed for speed rather than for capacity. Traditionally a cutter is a smaller sailing ship with a single mast 

hmmm ~ smaller sailing ship ~ smaller quilt piece, do you see where I am going with this? or is it simply what it sounds like ‘cutter quilt’; cutting away pieces from a larger piece.

And then there’s good old handy google – I could have just googled ‘cutter quilt’ and brought up all kinds of information on this but I didn’t.

So just in case, there may be another ninny out there …….