Day 12

Today is Sunday. I went to the store this morning and found a large rotary board and cutter for about 1/3 the price of the one at the quilt store, so I bought it! Too bad I didn't have this initially - it would have saved a bit of time...

The rotary cutter is like a pizza cutter. You have to be careful with it! I used my right hand to hold down the ruler and my left hand to cut (I'm a lefty). I angled the cutter toward the ruler to avoid the cutter making a turn into the fabric (which it did a few times). However, it also went up onto the ruler a few times, slicing a thin groove into the plastic. Had it hit my hand while up there, the white fabric would have turned red...

I lined up the 12 blocks with the GT's on the board, used the ruler, and cut off any additional material.

I then took the Black GT pieces and cut 1/4" seam allowance on all 4 sides.

After that, I took the rest of the white fabric, and cut out the 20 small squares (that will meet at the end of the colored strips.) Adding a 1/4" seam allowance makes them 1 1/2" x 1 1/2" each. To do this without wasting fabric, I cut 2 long strips, then cut the strips into 1 1/2" sections, and then took each of those sections, and trimmed the height down to 1 1/2" to make squares.

Once this was done, I took the border pieces that I had, traced the outline to the fusible webbing, cut the webbing, and attached it by ironing the webbing to the back of the border GTs - this is the same as I had done with the ones that went on the white squares. The red, white, and blue border cars are now ready to be sewn to the border fabric. (Doesn't that picture just make you want to salute?) :-)