Ryan Whitaker

Last spring I started a king-size quilt with 1,200 half-square triangles. By the time I had three rows sewn, the layout was chaos – blocks sliding on my dining table, color value shifting as I stepped back, no way to see the whole design at once. That frustration is exactly why quilting design walls exist, … Read more

A good flannel design wall has saved me from sewing together more ugly quilts than I care to admit. I learned this the hard way during my first sampler quilt, when I pieced twenty blocks into rows on my sewing table, sewed them together, and only then realized three colors clashed so badly the whole … Read more

Quilting a king-size project on a standard domestic machine is a battle against gravity. I have wrestled with king quilts that weigh 15 pounds once rolled, and the only way to finish one without back pain is a freestanding longarm quilting frame. King quilts measure roughly 108 inches wide by 90 to 100 inches long, … Read more

If your sewing room is more closet than studio, you already know the frustration of wanting longarm-style quilting without dedicating 10 feet of floor space to a permanent setup. I have been testing quilting equipment in tight spaces for over a decade, and I can tell you that compact longarm quilting frames have come a … Read more

If you’ve ever pulled a beautiful skein of hand-dyed yarn apart and watched it collapse into an instant knot pile, you already know why a swift matters. Large hanks — the generous twisted loops your favorite indie dyer ships — are nearly impossible to wind by hand without help. After testing eight wooden yarn swifts … Read more

I lost a whole bucket of minnows on a 95-degree August afternoon because I tried to skip the aerator. That was the day I started paying serious attention to bait tank conversion kits for coolers, and I have not gone fishing without one since. Live bait consistently outperforms artificial lures for crappie, catfish, bass, and … Read more

Storing fly rods the wrong way can snap a tippet section in seconds. After losing one rod tip to a leaning tube and another to a falling ceiling rack, our team committed 60 days to testing every wall-mounted option worth buying. This guide covers the best rod holders for fly rods vertical storage in , … Read more

I spent the last three summers on Lake Erie, Lake of the Woods, and the Texas Gulf Coast testing every cordless electric fillet knife I could get my hands on. By the end of one walleye opener I had run more than 300 fish through these blades, and the answer to Bubba vs Rapala cordless … Read more

I’ve processed deer, elk, and hogs on my own for over a decade, and I can tell you that a good gambrel and hoist kit makes the difference between a backbreaking afternoon and a smooth operation. After harvesting my first 380-pound elk alone in , I learned the hard way that cheap hooks and fraying … Read more

I still remember the first time I tried to wind a hank of hand-dyed merino by hand. Twenty minutes in, I had a knot the size of a golf ball and yarn wrapped around every chair leg in my living room. That’s the day I bought my first yarn ball winder and swift combo. If … Read more