How to Cut Fabric for Your First Quilt Without Getting Lost
You’re a brand new quilter and you’ve bought all the fabric for your quilt just as the pattern tells you, and now you’ve opened up the rest of your pattern to find a cutting chart that looks a little like math?
It can seem a little overwhelming. Understanding what those directions actually mean changes everything.
Why this matters
The three most important things to make quilting fun and enjoyable instead of stressful are:
- knowing what you’re doing AND why,
- taking your time, and
- staying organized.
Let’s see how those three things apply to cutting fabric for your quilt.
Understanding your fabric
Fabric is sold on bolts in the store, but how does it get on these bolts? And how does that affect how we’re cutting for our quilt?
Fabric is made in long strips on giant rolls, and it goes through machines feeding through both the weaving and then the printing processes. The edges of the fabric get a lot of wear and tear, so the fabric needs to be stronger on the edges. When fabric is manufactured, the edges are woven a little tighter so that they don’t ravel. Often the printing doesn’t go all the way to the edge either.
These edges are called selvedges. The width of the fabric is from selvedge to selvedge, as opposed to the length of the fabric which is the longwise as its rolled on and off the big giant rolls. Quilting fabric usually is about 40 inches wide from selvedge to selvedge.
How fabric cutting works
When you cut fabric for a quilt, you usually start by cutting strips from selvedge to selvedge, or across the width of the fabric. Patterns will specify this as WOF (width of fabric). As you cut the pieces for your quilt, you’re going to cut big long strips across the width of the piece of fabric, and then you will cut each strip into smaller pieces.
Cutting straight strips
To make it more efficient to cut, we fold the fabric – matching up those selvedges together, BUT you must cut square to the fold. If you don’t cut square to the fold, when you unfold your cut strip, you will have elbows in your strips.
More help cutting straight here
All cutting instructions are slightly different, but the general process is to cut things into strips and then subcut those strips into smaller pieces.
Some people like to cut all their strips first and then do all the subcutting, and some people like to cut a strip and then subcut it. You can do it either way, whichever works for you.
But after you cut something, make sure you check it off as done on your cutting chart. You’ll thank yourself when you come back to your project after being called away to do something else!
Staying organized while cutting
The first step when I see a cutting chart is to identify what these fabrics are. Go through all the fabrics you have for the quilt and label them according to the pattern – Fabric A might be your pink solid, Fabric B your polka dot. This labeling isn’t overkill – you do not want to be wondering later which fabric you were planning to use where.
In addition to keeping track of which fabric is which, you’re going to be cutting a lot of different pieces. It’s important to keep track of which piece is which so sewing goes smoothly later. Most patterns assign unit numbers (or letters) to each type of unit you are cutting. It will really help you later in the quilt process to label your stacks of identical pieces with the unit number. Many patterns come with labels you can cut out and put on top of the stacks of your pieces as you cut them. If your pattern doesn’t come with labels, just cut out little pieces of paper or use masking tape and label your pieces as you cut.
Later when you start sewing, the pattern will say “Take unit one of Fabric A and unit one of Fabric C and put them together,” and you’ll be able to find them because everything is labeled.
I do all this labeling and organizing as I do every single step in the cutting process. So many times I get pulled away from quilting in the middle of something, and when I come back (maybe a week later), I need to know where I was.
Special cutting situations
Fat quarters
When a pattern tells you to cut things from fat quarters, it often shows you how to lay it out. A fat quarter is 18 inches by 20 inches. Pay attention to what you’re cutting and the orientation of the fat quarter, and make sure your fat quarter is oriented the way the pattern specifies so that you have enough fabric for all your pieces.
Cutting in half diagonally
Sometimes a pattern will say cut a square in half once diagonally or cut a square in half twice diagonally. This simply means: once diagonally creates two triangles, and twice diagonally creates four triangles. When cutting twice diagonally, keep the square on the table, cut it one way, don’t move those pieces, and cut the other way. Then you can move them and stack them up.
Bringing it all together
Understanding your cutting instructions and staying organized eliminates the stress from this part of quilting. Just don’t expect to get it done in an instant and you’ll be happy.
Take your time, stay organized, and remember – this preparation sets you up for success in every step that follows.
Happy sewing! 😉
