Fleece Fun Tie Blanket Ruler and a Misprint tutorial

A few Saturdays ago I woke up to an email. It was very polite asking if I could replace a template, since the one they had received was defective. She attached a picture and sure enough, on closer examination it appeared that the template was printed backwards! “how strange” I thought “must be a fluke”. I went downstairs and looked closely at another template, yup, that one was also printed wrong. I pulled out box after box and in true horror movie fashion I was faced with every unit in my stock being printed backwards!

I wish I could tell you that I took it well, but there were some tears of frustration and anger. How did I miss this? How did my kids (who I employ to pack the templates) miss this? How did the manufacturer miss this? But mostly – how did I miss this??!! I had my little pity party. My youngest son walked in and asked me what was wrong. I told him “I was fired”. I then explained to him that I work for myself that I wasn’t really fired but I did feel like an idiot.

I blew nose and came up with a plan on what to do. I needed to get all my stock off of Amazon immediately, I needed to talk to the manufacturer, I needed to figure out what I was going to do with all of the misprint templates (this happened to be my biggest order to date) I needed to put guardrails in place so this never happens again.

After pulling all my stock from Amazon I’ve been receiving piles of deliveries like this one with all my misprinted units in it. Only 120 more to go…

But one small mercy is that the template itself is fine and usable. It’s just marked wrong. So if you purchase a misprint by accident or on purpose ( by the way – THANK YOU) I want to show you how you can mark it so it’s easily usable.

How to use the Misprinted Template

Step 1 – Determine that you do in fact have a misprinted template

To determine that you are in possession of a misprinted template you will need to take a close look.

The tell tale sign is that the “Block Cutting Line” (slot) does NOT extend past the dashed line.

If the slot does extend past the dashed line –

your template is correctly printed. And you’re golden. You can use it as marked.

Step 2 – Get ready to Mark the Fleece Tie Blanket Template so you can use it

There are a couple of different ways you can mark the misprinted template so it’s easier to use.

You can use either masking tape/ washi tapes or an oil based Sharpie. Out of these two solutions I personally prefer the Sharpie, but understand that the odds are more likely that you have masking tape readily available.

Step 3 – Mark the “Block” (Masking tape version)

Flip the template over so the longer line that extends beyond the dashed box is on the left side. We need to shift the dashed box over one tine so the template can be used correctly.

Mark out the correct block by placing tape along the far right edge, the top and next to the longest line (the correct block cutting line).

Now you have your “block” marked out you can follow the instructions here to use the template. Note that the “block cutting line” is the first slot on the left in side the masked off square ( and is the longest slot on the template).

Step 3b – Mark the “Block” (Sharpie version)

Please note that for this to work on acrylic and not rub off you need to use an OIL BASED Sharpie.

Start with the template facing down (So the printed words are touching the surface). The correct “block cutting line” should be on the left side.

Draw the correct block on the template and draw arrows to the correct block cutting line. Bonus points if your Sharpie is a cute color. Now your template is ready to be used following the directions here.

Misprinted templates are available for a steep discount in my shop here.

If you have received one of the misprinted ones before this SNAFU was discovered, please fill out the form below, let me know where and when you purchased your template so I can assist you.

Now if you’ll excuse me I need to go put a million misprint stickers on my templates.