Craft Day and Quilt Blocks

Mom and I had a craft day yesterday – first one in a loooong time. She’s working on some Christmas presents at the moment, so she had an opportunity to teach me how to cut out quilt blocks — ones where you need a specific pattern to appear in the same place on each one.

I thought I’d share her process — but, if you’re an experienced quilter, my apologies in advance. This post will be the equivalent for you of, “Wow! I just learned to make this exciting breakfast food! It’s called “Toast!”

But for all us beginners, here goes:

First, lay your fabric out on your cutting board, make sure it’s lined up with one vertical and one horizontal guideline, and cut off the selvages. (Mom tells me that, because the selvages are more tightly-woven than the rest of the fabric, they have a different amount of stretch. And this can cause your finished block to distort, so off they go.)

If the cut edge of your fabric needs straightening, you can do this here as well.

Then, Mom had made these awesome templates for each of her block pieces. And we moved them around on the fabric to figure out what section we wanted on each block. Pretty flippin’ cool, no? (These, by the way, represent the sewn block, so we had to add in the seam-allowances as we cut.)

Once we knew what we wanted on the block, then we decided on some guide-points — spots on the pattern we could use to help us place our cuts. So for example, in this block, the right-hand edge just grazes the blue cat’s cheek. And the top edge, as you can see, just grazes that bent yellow cat tail. We made detailed notes of all these points.

We then used our guide-points to cut a long strip, as wide as our block.

Then, lining this strip up on the cutting board, we used our top and bottom guide points to cut the rest of the block.

(I should add here that I’m using photos from a couple different blocks in this post, so if you’re looking for the same guide-points in the pattern, they might vary. Sorry.)

Once you’ve cut one block, then you can line it up next to the rest of that strip, and use it as a guide to cutting the rest of your blocks. The nose of this orange cat at the bottom edge made an especially good guide.

Once you’ve cut all the blocks you can from that first strip, use guide points on the pattern to cut another long strip, and start again.

I should add here that this method works for patterns that have a discernable, regular repeat. We had one fabric that seemed truly random in arrangement, and that one we had to cut just as randomly. (And when I say “We,” I really mean “Mom.”)