Quilling a perfect circle

In my 'Quilling the line' post earlier this week, I mentioned how difficult I thought it would be to create and then glue down a perfect circle outline with a single quilling strip. Well, of course, that got me thinking about possible solutions to the problem ... and, you know me, I was not going to rest until I'd thought of a way of doing it!

Here's my solution, which involves a straight-sided wine glass - but I'm sure you could do it with any cylindrical object.

First, position the rim of the glass on your paper or card. I centred it on a card, and marked the position with some very faint pencil marks.

Next, wind a quilling strip once around the rim, gluing down a very short overlap. (I used a 5mm wide strip for this.)

Slide the paper circle up so that half of it stands just clear of the glass rim, leaving enough around the glass so that the circular shape is maintained. Then apply tiny dots of glue right around the exposed edge with a cocktail stick.

Slide the circle back down again so that the glued edge is flush with the rim of the glass. Position the glass on the card using the pencil marks, so that the glued edge of the paper circle makes good contact all round.

Allow the glue to set for a few seconds before carefully withdrawing the glass, leaving your perfectly shaped paper circle behind. Remove any visible glue on the surface of the card with the clean end of the cocktail stick.

Start quilling!

I haven't had time to finish this particular bit of quilling yet, but it will keep! Meanwhile, I hope this technique will be helpful for other quillers. I'm sure you could use it with other suitably shaped objects to make squares, triangles or rectangles too!