How to Cut Fabric for Quilting Blocks

I love fussy cutting and I can't wait to share it with you. Most quilters think of fussy cutting as cutting a novelty fabric into little squares and putting it in a block. And that's wonderful and really fun, but I'm going to show you from there all the way up to museum-quality quilts. First, I want to start with a fabric like this. A fabric like this is almost made for fussy cutting.

Obviously it can be used in other ways but this fabric has motifs that are really easy to cut out and put into a block. When you cut out a fabric like this, you're left with fabric that looks like this: holes, bits and pieces. And what came out of that are little squares like this. Here's your block. Now what's really fun about making a block like this, you can see there are lots of motifs here but you can pick the ones you really want.

I happen to love bunnies, so I put the bunny in there. This is the most common form of fussy cutting. I'm sure you've seen it a lot but it's just the beginning. One of the best things, one of the most fun things about fussy cutting is switching it into stripes. People don't think of stripes as something to fussy cut, but they're wonderful.

Let me show you how. This is a stripe that I bought quite a while ago. And when I bought it, I loved it, and I got at home and I put it in my stash. And a couple of years later, I looked at my stash and said, "Why did I ever buy this?" I'm sure you've had the same experience. You look at a fabric in your stash like, "What was I thinking?" Well, if you have a fabric like that, a stripe like that, here's some things you can do that will actually make it entertaining and attractive to you again.

When you're cutting a stripe like this, you have options. You can cut so the stripe is centered. You can cut so the stripe is on the bias. You could cut asymmetrically so you only have part of the stripe in your square. I'm going to show you when you cut a straight of grain squares, you end up with squares like this.

As you can see, I've had them follow one another around but they're straight of grain. And as you can see, that's really cute. I think it's a lot better looking than this. Here's a second way to cut the same stripe. As you can see, these squares here came out of the center like that.

If you're going to be cutting stripes on the bias, you really want to starch the fabric first because if the fabric isn't stiff, your bias edges are going to skew. They're going to start... You know how they do, they grow on the edges. So I really recommend that you starch fabric on the back before you start cutting a bias cut square. One thing to remember.

if you're using starch in your quilting, bugs like starch. Bugs will eat starch. Bugs are attracted to starch. So after you've starched something, cut it, sewn it, please wash it. However you're going to wash your quilt, wash that fabric to get the starch out.

There are starch alternatives on the market. A lot better. It's called starch alternative. It has none of the foodstuffs in it the bugs like. So that's a good one that you don't have to wash out.

And when you're washing out, you're not just washing your blocks or your quilt. You're going to wash this leftover piece of fabric because this is still going to be something you can use and have fun with. But if you're going to store it with the rest of your fabrics, you need to wash it. Now another really fun way to use stripes is when you're doing bindings. I'm sure you've seen quilts that have striped bindings.

Again, you have the choice of a straight of grain strip or a bias cut strip. Now a straight of grain strip, when you fold it to make your binding like this, you'll notice that when that goes on the edge of the quilt, you're going to be showing one lengthwise stripe and on the actual edge-edge, right on that little rim, you again, show just one stripe. It's really attractive, and it may be just what you want to do, especially if you're not comfy with a bias binding. But if you do a bias binding, look what happens. When you put this on the edge of your quilt, you have stripes like a barber pole, which are a lot of fun, really interesting.

And if you're a really... If you're a quilter that's comfortable with things like scallops and curves, as you know, a bias binding has to be used in those situations, and the bias stripe is really fun. These stripes were cut from this fabric. If you're going to cut a bias strip like this to make a binding, what you want to do is put your ruler so that the 45 degree angle line on your straight ruler is along this stripe. When you put a 45 degree angle stripe, 45 degree angle line on your ruler, on the stripe, the edge of the ruler will be going exactly on the bias grain.

Here's an example. We're going to pretend that this is a quilt, that this is the edge of a quilt. And I want to show you what this really looks like when you have fabric over it. There! Do you see how that looks when it's turned?

See the stripes? Pretty, huh! But if we take our bias stripe, it's giving you a whole different look. It's still really fun, it's really pretty, it's just a different look. It's just not the same as that straight of grain.

Remember again, if you're doing a bias cut strip, starch that fabric before you cut it. Starch it to smithereens. Make it really stiff like paper because then it won't do this, as you can see. A bias strip stretches where the straight of grain strip does not. When you're looking at stripes, as I said, you can use them for this wonderful bias stripe binding.

You can use them to fussy cut little areas here. See that stripe? This is a quilt by Vicki Bellino. She used paper piecing, English paper piecing. And one of the ways she fussy cut, she put one of these hexagons.

This is one piece. This is not two separate pieces. And what she did was she took her hexagon, her paper hexagon, and she put it right on a stripe on either side like this. And when she cut it out, it looks like she pieced it, but she didn't. And here are some more stripes.

Now this, you might look at this and think it's not really fussy cut. What's fussy cut about it is the fact that it has that straight of grain stripe binding but it's not running this way, it's running the other way. As we were looking at this straight of grain strip going like that, you could run that straight of grain strip the other way and make your binding like this. So it's something to remember that a straight a grain strip can go either direction. It doesn't just have to go lengthwise, it could go on the crosswise grain as well.

Another really great use or another great type of stripe is a border stripe. A border stripe is often produced by fabric companies in conjunction with a panel. This quilt by the... This is a quilt by Deblois Torel. This quilt has both a panel and a series of stripes, board stripes.

When you look at this quilt, what do you see? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 borders. I don't want to do 12 borders. I don't have time to do 12 borders, much less do I have patience, especially when it's a quarter inch border. But if you look at this closely, what you're going to see is, this stripe is actually part of a center panel.

This is an actual strip. From here to here, that's one border strip from a border stripe fabric. So those four borders are just from one fussy cut. When we say fussy cut about border stripes, we mean, for instance, you have this little vignette here, these little pictures of the snow people. What you're going to do if you want it to look just like that, you would look at the bottom of the vignette, the bottom of this square, you would measure out 3/8 of an inch so you have 1/8 inch of the blue, 1/4 inch of your seam allowance, and then you would cut being very careful to keep the bottom of those vignettes on your three inch, seven inch line.

That way, it looks uniform. Now this strip, again, is a real honest to goodness fabric strip. But from here to here, this whole distance, is one border stripe. Do you know how fast that is? All you have to do is cut it off and stick it on.

And you'll notice that there are two different border stripes we talked about and I'm going to show you where they come from. This is one fabric. It's called a border stripe and it feels... Look and see, it goes all the way from salvage to salvage, doing one stripe after another. What's fun about this is you're the one who gets to decide what part of the strip you use, how wide, how thin you could have a border, starting here, going all the way down under these little vignettes or you can do what Deb did with those little vignettes.

As you can see, she ends with the blue here. There's your blue. Here's the blue, here's the green with the writing. Your little sawtooths jiggy jaggies. Here's your vignette.

For this one out here, you can see snowman, snow children on skis. That is this stripe right here. And not only is it the snow people, but do you see this little stripe here and this stripe here? That all all comes from this one fabric from here to here. If you cut from here to here, you get this stripe that Debbie used.

What's also fun is you can use bits and stripes that the person who made the pattern did not. This stripe here with the snowflakes, that's nowhere in the quilt. It doesn't mean you can't use it. You could give yourself a wider border. You could start with snowflakes, go all the way through the vignette like this and start down here and make that different.

It's up to you how you want to use a border stripe. They're amazingly useful. This one piece of fabric, this one bit here gives you one, two, three, four, it just keeps going all these different stripes in one print. Now, if you look at the center of this quilt, do you see these little guys here, and they look pieced on? Well, this is the panel that was used to make this quilt.

These snow men are already on the panel. You didn't have to cut them and you didn't have to sew them on. They're just waiting for you to use them as is this stripe here. Fussy cutting a panel means you can use it however you want. You don't have to cut where the manufacturer says you have to cut.

You don't have to do it anybody else's way but your own. And if that means that you lop off your snowman's head and roll them over here like Calvin, you just go right ahead. The next thing we're going to talk about is how to fussy cut with templates. You're going to really enjoy it. Fuss cutting with templates is really easy and it's really fun.

I love fussy cutting with templates because I like to have just what I want in the center of my patch. The way it works. On this fabric, I really wanted to highlight the green French horn. And how am I going to do that? If I'm just trying to cut it without a template, I'm not going to get the French horn in the exact same place of every patch.

So what I use is a piece of template plastic. The template plastic is placed over the motif you want, in this case, the French horn, and you just trace there around the outline and you can move this template plastic from one French horn to another. When you're cutting with template plastic, it's really important to always use your acrylic ruler. If you use an acrylic ruler, you're going to keep yourself safe and you're also going to keep your template plastic safe. But if you cut template plastic, if you just cut along the edge with your rotary cutter, it's not going to be good.

So remember to always use a rotary cutter and an acrylic ruler when you're cutting your template plastic, template pieces out of your fabric. So how did I make that? It's so easy. All you do is put it over the shape you want, in this case, it's the violin, and you trace around with a sharpie, another pen, a pencil, whatever you want, and then you can just keep moving it around. Another way to use template plastic.

Oh, excuse me, I forgot to show you the masterpiece. Tada! See what happens when you fussy cut with your French horn? Another way to use template plastic, it's very similar. This is fabric, that as you can see, has already been cut.

It's a stripe and it's what made this star. This star was made from this fabric. The way it was done is with a very simple template. You cut a template, the size and shape of the patch you're going to use in your star or your block of whatever kind. And then as you can see here in pencil, there's a line drawn across right there.

And that line is going to go on a line on the fabric. So in this case, I could put it on that black line right there, cut around. If I did that eight times, I would have a star like this. This is what happened here. And if you're cutting, you'll see that these all come out exactly the same because that little template was on the same line for everyone.

A quick way to get a beautiful star just the way you want it. And now for a super treat, I'm going to show you what happens when you take template fussy cutting to it's nth degree. Do you see that teeny weeny little star? That teeny weeny little star was made from this fabric and using tiny little templates, teeny tiny little templates same way as you cut everything else, remembering, please use an acrylic ruler. The only way you can do this without using an acrylic ruler is if you trace this with something like a white chalk pencil.

Just trace around the edge and then cut out with scissors. But as you can see, that teeny tiny little star is just so pleasing. And if you look at this beautiful, tiny quilt, you can see all these little stars have their own personalities and they all came out of one fabric, which is another really cool thing about fussy cutting with templates. You can get so many looks from one fabric. This little quilt was made by Sherri Driver.

And here's another one of Sherri's quilts. To show you how this really can be beautiful, if you look right here, you can see that a very traditional fabric was cut in such a way that a stripe was on the edge and the flowers were in the center. Now we're going to talk about broderie perse. Broderie perse is another really fun way to fussy cut. Broderie perse involves picking fabrics you really like, maybe it's a bunch of bright florals, a kitty fabric, anything that you like together and what you do is you fuse, fusible web, onto the back of any fabric you like.

Then you cut out a motif. In this case, I've cut out a leaf. Over here, I've cut out a little flower and as you can see, I'm using fusible web. If you're someone who loves hand applique, of course, you would cut out your motif, leaving a quarter inch all the way around, so you could turn that under as your seam allowance. But in this case, using fusible web, I really enjoy it because I can have a lot of fun in a hurry.

So what I'm going to do is just take that one motif or leaf and I'll decide where I want it. This is going to be a flower leaf and that's all that's involved. Fuse on the back, cut out the shapes you want, and stick them however you like and then fuse them down. This is another example of broderie perse. This is a really interesting example because it's three-dimensional.

This was made by Susan Grece of Oregon. And the way this works, as you can see, it's three-dimensional. She cut out her flowers first. Then she fused them to another fabric. Cut them out completely around and then she'd sewed them on, tacking only in the center, which left this free-to-be pedals.

She did the same thing here. As you can see, broderie perse has so many possibilities. It's really fun. A couple of other things you can do with fussy cutting. As long as we're here, we might as well share.

Paper piecing, English paper piecing. You can cut out little groups of flowers, one flower per hexagon. And you can just imagine how cute that's going to be all sewn together. Pick a fabric you love, start there. If you pick a fabric you love, you're going to love your project no matter what it is.

One other thing when you're thinking about fussy cutting, think about fabrics you make. When you sew a number of strips together, you're making a fabric. I sewed a lot of strips together, pinks and yellows, a lot like this. I cut squares out just like that but I made sure that when I cut, I had the ruler exactly on the same seam every time. So each of these was cut to be the same and you can see how beautifully they go together.

They make sort of a ring. So remember when you piece something, you can use that fabric to fussy cut. Finally, fussy cutting isn't just for simple things. It's not just an easy technique. Fussy cutting is a masterful thing that can be used in museum-quality quilts.

If you look very closely at this quilt, you'll see teeny tiny little pieces of stripe fussy cut. Notice that on this plan, there's a star in the center of each of those tiny little squares. This is fussy cutting at its best. This was also fussy cut. All of these stripes were fussy cut.

And what you don't see immediately, this is an actual patch. Each patch was cut to exactly match every other patch and to keep the look of the stripe. And for my last example, these quilts were both by Sherri Driver. This quilt has been in many shows and has won many awards. These fabric she's used are called ecots.

And as you can see, she has cut right down the stripe to give a starburst that's uniform. She's done the same thing here using triangles that are all cut the same way. Her stripes are here. This is full of fussy cutting but it's fussy cutting at a museum level. Fussy cutting can run the garment from simple to museum.

You just have to do what you like best.