Beginner Quilting Session 3: Cutting
Ashley HoughDescription
When it comes to quilting, a rotary cutter is much faster and easier than scissors. Learn what a rotary cutting system is and how to use it properly. Ashley will give you tips on how to hold your ruler and use the rotary cutter so you get clean cuts every time.
So even with all the different pre-cut fabric sizes available, we're going to eventually need to cut our fabric. Now, if you have a background in sewing, maybe in doing some garment sewing or things like that, you're probably used to using your scissors, but when it comes to quilting, rotary cutters are the way to go. So that's what we're going to be using today. Now, a lot of times you might hear somebody refer to a rotary cutting system. This generally means a rotary cutter, a ruler and a rotary cutting mat.
So we're gonna talk about all those things right now. Now rotary cutters come in a variety of brands and sizes and they're all just a little bit different. The most common rotary cutter that I will use in the size that I think is a good beginner size to start out with is a 45 millimeter rotary cutter. This will work to cut through most of the layers of fabric that you'll be cutting through and it still works to be able to trim up your quilt when you're done. So even though you have multiple layers of fabric and a layer of batting, you can still cut through it with the 45 millimeter cutter.
You can find these smaller rotary cutters, which I do find that they come in handy if you are cutting curved edges or having to make sharp turns like that, it's a little bit easier to maneuver if you have the smaller blade, but in general, I would recommend the 45 millimeter and that would be the one I would get if I was just starting out and didn't have one to start with. Now, no matter what brand you get, they have sort of the same basic parts and functions no matter what they might look like and all rotary cutters will have some sort of blade guard. So you can see I have this black plastic protruding around the edges of my blade and this protects my blade. So if I grabbed it or touched it or did anything like that, I'm not gonna worry about cutting my hands, because that blade guard is in place. So if I was going to make a cut and I'm right-handed, I would pull back and expose the bottom part of the blade and I could make my cut.
If I am left-handed, I would do the same thing with the opposite side. At no time would I expose both sides of the blade at the same time, because that just increases my chance of accidentally cutting my finger, especially if, you know, say you're one of those people that in the kitchen, you like to put your finger out maybe on the top of your knife. Well, if you've exposed both sides of that blade, you could accidentally cut your finger. So definitely always only expose one side at a time and then when you're done making your cuts, make sure you put that blade guard back in place. Always make sure it's safe.
Now these are really sharp blades and it actually is safer to cut with a sharp blade versus a dull blade. If you find that you're really having to press on your blade to make it actually cut your fabric, that means you're gonna want to change your rotary blade. Using a dull blade, again, you're gonna be really pressing down on that blade and your chances of slipping are increased and you might have an injury. So always want to make sure you have a sharp blade. A good rule of thumb is to change your rotary blade before every new big project.
If you've only made a couple small cuts on a small project, you're probably safe, but just always make sure you're aware of how often you use your blade and how sharp or dull it might be. Now, a lot of rotary cutters are different in how you can change the blade. This one, it just pops out really quick and what I wanna make sure is that when I'm changing a blade, whether I'm putting in the new one or taking out the old one, that I'm holding it like this. I don't ever wanna grab the sides of it, because while it may be too dull to cut my fabric, it can definitely still cut through my fingers. So I wanna make sure that I'm safe when I'm using those and then when I am changing my blade, I wanna make sure that I dispose of it safely too.
So I like to just keep one of my containers, mark it as used and then I just load it up with all my dull blades, when it's full, I tape it a few times, so I know it's not gonna come open in my trashcan and then I just throw it away. So always make sure you have your sharp blade in your rotary cutter and you should be good to go for cutting your fabric. The next thing we're going to need is a ruler. Now there are so many different kinds of rulers out there, so many different shapes, some are specialty rulers, some have different functions. This is the first quilting ruler I ever got and the one I use more than anything.
You can see it is a clear ruler. I can see through it really easily. It's got all my lines on there, inch grid lines, they've got half inch grid lines and it's definitely long enough for most cuts that I'm gonna be making, this one is 24 inches in length. So this is one, like I said, I find it to be a one I can use for pretty much any project. Now sometimes, depending on how I have my sewing room set up, I find that if I have my desk up against the wall, this ruler is constantly running into the wall.
So I needed a shorter version. So you can get this same kind of ruler. This one is just a little bit shorter and it's also a little narrower. Still has the same inch grid marks on there, still has our half inch side over here, still very easy to use. This one actually has little bits of texture on the back of it, which provides a non-slip surface.
So when I put it down on my fabric, I only have to apply very little bit of pressure and my ruler is gonna stay in place. So that gives me a little bit more control when it comes to cutting my fabric. Another shape of ruler you can get is a square. Now this is again, just like our other rulers, and it is a clear ruler, we've got our inch grid lines on there, but if you're going to be cutting a lot of squares, this one is really handy, because you don't have to say measure over and mark and then measure up and mark, you can just lay your square ruler down on your fabric and then cut around it. You can get these square rulers in many different sizes, really small ones, really large ones, you can also get rectangular rulers.
So that's an option that you can get for rulers as well. So we have squares and we have our longer versions and then there's a lot of different specialty rulers out there. Now I only have a couple today, just to show you an example of, you know, if you're gonna cut some triangles, here's a triangle ruler. You can get rulers that are hexagons or octagons. You can pretty much get a ruler for anything and you'll find, you know, if you get more into quilting, and more specialty blocks is what you're looking to create.
A lot of blocks actually have rulers specifically for them that make constructing them a lot easier, but if you're just starting out, you may not need to get a bunch of those specialty rulers yet, just a simple square or rectangular one will work. The one, I guess you can consider it a ruler, specialty ruler that we'll be using today is these little guys. Now these are called the add-a-quarter rulers and what they're allowing us to do is add a quarter inch. So that's what those lines on there, we have a quarter inch here and because quarter inch is the seam allowance that we're going to be using in all of our piecing for quilting, this is really handy to just mark some stitching lines, being able to measure and make sure we have our accurate seam allowance. So we will use this one a little bit later on today, but it's not necessarily one you have to have, I just wanna show you how you can use it.
So we have our rotary cutters and we have our rulers. Now let's talk a little bit about our rotary cutting mats. Now there's also a number of variety of sizes and brands and different ways you can get rotary cutting mats. When you're using your rotary cutter, you definitely want to have something to protect your surface, but you really wanna make sure you have something that's meant for rotary cutters. A lot of times these mats are self-healing and what it's actually doing is absorbing your blade a little bit while you're cutting, which allows your blade to stay sharper longer, as opposed to say, you go grab like a kitchen cutting board or something and you're dulling your blade as you're going across that.
You really wanna make sure you have a mat designed for rotary cutters. So in this case, I have one, it comes in a nice little fold-up travel case like this and it has a pressing surface on one side and a cutting surface on the other. So this is one way you can get a rotary cutting mat. Another way is just a large rectangle or square. You can get these in a bunch of different sizes.
You can find small little ones that you can just set on your tabletop or you can get ones that cover your entire work surface. So it'll all kind of depend on the size of cuts you're wanting to make as to which rotary cutting mat you wanna get. This is a good one to have. Unlike the one I just showed you that has sort of that case around it, this one is a little bit flimsy and flexible. So what I wanna make sure is that I'm always storing this flat.
More often than not, it's on my sewing table, my cutting table and it just stays there. I never really have to move it, but if I do have to move it and store it somewhere, I still wanna make sure that I'm keeping it flat. I don't ever wanna prop it up against a wall or something because it could start to bend and then if it stays like this for a long time, we could get sort of a permanent warp happening to our board, so we just wanna make sure that we keep these laying flat at all times. Another way that you can get rotary cutting mats is rotating rotary cutting mats. So if I turn this one over, you can see that I have this small little circle in the center of my rotary cutting mat and if I turn it up a little bit, you can see that it sticks out just a tiny bit and this little circle goes into the circle that we have here on the base of our rotary mat.
So it just fits in place like so and now my mat rotates. So say I'm cutting squares, I can make a cut, then rather than having to pick up and reposition my fabric, I can just rotate my mat, make another cut, rotate it and keep going along like that. So this is a good way to really maximize your time when you're cutting, you don't have to worry about picking up and repositioning your fabric all the time. A lot of people like to maybe position their sewing table so where they can walk all the way around it if they wanna move themselves, rather than moving their fabric on their mat and this eliminates the need for that, because you can simply rotate it and then make your next cut. So we have our rotary mat.
We have our rulers and we have our rotary cutters. So let's actually cut some fabric. So I have just a piece of fabric here and we're just gonna go over basic techniques for holding your ruler and your rotary cutter. So I'm not worried about whether my edges are lined up or anything yet, I'm just going to show you how to cut. So I have my fabric on my mat.
Now I'm gonna place my ruler, say I wanna make a cut right along here. What I wanna do is, I wanna make sure my ruler is where I want it and then I'm gonna apply some pressure. Now I'm spreading my hand out as far as I can go along the surface of the fabric. I don't wanna just hold it right here in the middle, because as I'm cutting, maybe those end are gonna wobble a little bit. So I want to apply pressure over as much as the ruler covering the fabric as I can.
Now, say I'm going to make a cut that's this way and I'm going to be cutting along a very long length of the ruler. What I would do, is I would hold my hand here, start making my cut and then I'm going to walk my hand up my ruler. So my left hand and my right hand are moving about the same pace, the one with the rotary cutter and the one holding the ruler. That way I know that no matter where I am in my cut, my ruler is staying nice and firmly pressed down along the fabric. So turn our fabric back this way, again, I'll make sure my ruler is in place, I'll apply a little bit of pressure.
Again, I'm not up here putting my entire body weight on it, just a little bit of pressure. I can expose my blade and then I'm simply going to run my blade along the edge of my ruler. I'm applying about as much pressure to this rotary blade as I am to the ruler, you can see I have a nice, accurate, straight cut. As soon as I was done making that cut, I put my blade guard back in place and you can see a perfect straight line in really little to no time. If I was going to be using my scissors for that, I would probably still be tracing this line and then I'd have to get my scissors and there'd be a lot of, sort of jagged marks, 'cause the scissors you have to stop and start and move your scissors along the fabric.
So you definitely wanna be using your rotary cutter. So now let's say we want to cut a square or something out of this fabric. Now that I have a straight line, I can sort of work off of this straight line. In a minute, we're gonna go over how you can line up your salvage edges on your fabric, but if you already have cut an edge and you know that it straight, you can go off of this. So if I want to maybe make a square or rectangle, I will use and I wanna use this ruler, I'm gonna utilize the marks on my rotary cutting mat to help me line everything up.
So you can see, I have my folded edge nicely lined up along one of the lines on my mat. I have the edge I have cut nicely lined up along this line over here and then I can simply put my ruler down wherever I wanna line it up at and you can see I'm lining my ruler up with these lines on my rotary mat. So even if I wanna cut a square, I don't necessarily have to have a square ruler. Between the marks on my straight ruler like this and on my mat, I would be able to cut pretty much any shape or size that I want. So if I cut four inches here, I can go up one, two, three, four inches there, and I can lay my rotary cutter or my ruler down and I can make a cut.
Now I just cut in two different directions, I cut away from me and I cut right in front of me. Those are pretty much the only two ways that you wanna cut. You never wanna be trying to reach around and be cutting back towards you or really trying to hold your ruler this way to maybe cut in front of you. It's just a little bit awkward when you're trying to maneuver your fabric. So when you're cutting, just try to cut up and away from you or straight across this way.
So that would be how you just do basic cuts with your rotary cutter. Now something that's very popular to cut, and that you can buy in a pre-cut option, but if you want to cut them yourselves, are strips. So if you're going to be cutting some strips, odds are, you'll have a whole width of fabric, so your 42 inches and you may want a strip that is that long. So I obviously don't have 42 inches worth of rotary cutting mat right here, so what I will end up doing is folding my fabric in layers like this, so I can cut more at once. So in this case, what I've done, is I wanna cut some strips, but I want to make sure that I'm starting off with my fabric perfectly lined up to begin with.
So I'm lining up my salvage edge. Now, when you buy fabric on a bolt, you'll have an edge like this known as the salvage and you'll be able to tell it, obviously there's a folded edge and a salvage edge but as you can see here, this edge is a salvage, this is just known as a raw edge. The salvage is where you'll see information printed on your fabric, whether that's where you got it, the designer. So if you see any sort of white strip and information on the edge of your fabric, you know that that's the salvage edge. So we're gonna layer up and fold up our fabric and all of our selvages are nice and lined up, but as I can see, we may have this little bit of a weird, they're almost like little tiny holes along our salvage of our fabric and they actually come up into the color.
Now, whether this was just how the manufacturer produced their fabric, either way it's not something that I want to have in whatever it is that I'm cutting out. So the first thing that I would do, is actually cut that off. So what I wanna do when I'm cutting strips or cutting off the edge of the strip like that, is I want to take my folded edge and I wanna make sure that folded edge is lined up perfectly with the line here on my mat. These edges up here, while there may be one fold involved, there is these raw edges and those are no way lined up and I'm not worried about those. I'm worried about cutting from the folded edge first.
So to cut strips, I would simply line up my ruler and in this case, because my ruler is longer than my fabric, I can line up my ruler, both on the bottom and the top of my fabric. So here at the bottom, it's lined up. I also have it lined up at the top. I'm gonna again, apply pressure over as much of the ruler as I can and then I'm going to cut, just like this and now I can remove that and now I know I have a nice straight edge that I can start cutting strips. Now, say I wanna cut some two inch strips.
I could either use the, or we'll go two and a half inch strips, I could either use the markings on my rotary cutting mat here to help me or I'm gonna use my mat, I'm going to rotate it around and then I'm gonna utilize the size of my ruler. So my ruler is a two and a half inch ruler. So I could then, not even really mattering whether these are lined up on a line or not, I can then line up the edge of my fabric along the edge of my ruler. I know my ruler is two and a half inches and I can make the cut that way. If I wanted three and a half inches, again I have this ruler as an option or I couldn't line up my fabric with my rotary mat.
So again, that's just a couple of ways that you can utilize maybe the different functions of your rotary mat. If it turns how you can really maximize the use of your rulers, using them both in their width as well as their length for cutting and then how to safely and properly use your rotary cutters. Making sure your blades are always safe and you're always keeping those covered and then now it would be a good time to grab some of the fabric you might already have, even if it's just small little scraps of fabric and then just practice cutting, practice making sure that you're doing a nice long continuous movement. Try not to stop and start a bunch, but really just get comfortable using your rotary cutting system and go ahead and cut out just a few random shapes and then come back here and we're gonna work on piecing our fabric together.
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