Tools of the Trade
Day Eighteen: Rolling Ruler
A few years ago, I spent each day in January writing about a different tool I use in my maskmaking. As I am currently redesigning my entire website in the new year, I thought it might be nice to revisit this project. Each day in January 2021, I’ll share a different item that I use in my studio. I hope some of these can help other people who are interested in making wrestling masks.
This is one of those products that I searched for forever, but couldn’t find for the longest time because it didn’t exist. It’s a simple device, and very useful, so you’d think it would be fairly common, but it turns out it didn’t come to be until Kickstarter was around. It’s called the Curve Runner, and it’s a rolling ruler, basically just a circular ruler mounted on a handle grip. You roll it along a shape and it gives you a measure of the total distance. I find it invaluable when I’m creating patterns and I need to make sure the length of the seam line of one piece matches the length of the corresponding line on another piece where they’re sewn together. I used to clumsily try to do this with a tape measure, but this tool makes it MUCH easier! This one is in centimetres because I try to do everything metric, but it’s also available in inches.