Day 7

Today, I cut out the 12 white squares from the white fabric. I had more than enough fabric, as I reduced the size from 10”x10” squares to 8”x8” squares. The supplies needed for this part were a scissors, ruler, white fabric, and fabric pen.

I laid out the fabric on a hard surface, making sure the fabric was not stretching. If the fabric hangs off of an end, it will pull on the fabric. Because cotton is elastic, if you measure or cut the piece when it is stretched out, it will shrink back to its original size once it is cut, leaving a smaller piece than you need.

Once the fabric was flat, I used the fabric pen and ruler to draw 8 ½” x 8 ½” squares.

The reason I am not cutting 8”x8” squares, is because I need to allow ¼” around the entire square for the seam. I only had a small area to work with, so I could only measure 2 squares at a time. The fabric ruler was very useful in making accurate 90 degree lines – something you would have trouble getting with a regular 12” ruler.

I would also like to point out that if you have a rotary mat and rotary cutter, it would be much quicker and easier to cut out the squares. However, since I am trying not to spend too much money, I chose to just use the ruler, pen, and scissors.

When an outline of the squares was drawn, I set the ruler and pen down, picked up the scissors, and cut along the lines.

The lines were not perfectly straight, but they do not need to me. The edges will be tucked under as part of the seam. However, I did make sure to check each piece against the ruler once it was cut to make sure I did not stretch out the material while marking the outline:

I did not have to re-cut anything (that is a first!), since all 12 of the pieces turned out to be the correct size.

Once this was done, I wet the edge of a sponge, and gently patted all of the edges to get rid of the blue ink.

If you pull at the fabric, even very lightly, the edges will fray. There is no need to apply pressure. Once the material is wet, the ink magically disappears! Here is an example of one square done the correct way and one (the frayed one) done the wrong way:

I tried to be careful not to fray the material, because even though I can just cut off any strings, every time the material frays, it shortens the size of the square. I know I am being picky here as a few strings really isn’t going to make a difference, but since this is the first thing I have ever sewn, I would rather err on the side of accuracy. :-) Now that the 12 white squares have been cut, I ironed out the wrinkles and put them on a pile.