How to Cut Fabric Scraps
for Quilting and Sewing Projects

Fabric scraps really are the catch 22 of quilting: if you throw them away, you're horrible and wasteful, but if you don't throw them away, you're going to be swimming in fabric scraps!

Many quilters like to work with scrap fabric. There are a variety of projects online devoted entirely to quilting with oddly shaped fabric scraps!

But sometimes odd shapes and rough edges will just not work. In these situations you need to be able to cut usable shapes from your fabric scraps such as squares and rectangles.

If you're a scrap fan, you already understand that there will be situations where you can't cut your pieces from strips or even properly square your fabric because it's in such a weird piece.

It's times like these that you have to rely on your eye sight, high powered lighting, and grainline.

Take your scrap and lay it on your cutting mat. Turn on a very bright, high powered lamp and look at the lines of threads. It might even help to pull a few threads loose on one edge.

Line up your ruler with the thread lines on the scrap. You want your ruler to be lined up parallel with one thread line from beginning to end.

Yes, the threads are hard to see. That's why you need the high powered lighting!

Cut off one edge of the fabric scrap. If you're not sure whether you've cut the edge on grain, pull a few threads again. If the line was cut correctly, the threads should come off the full length of your scrap.

Using the the straight line you've just cut, line up your ruler and cut a parallel line 2 1/2" wide.

Now you can treat the scrap just like a strip of fabric. Square off the end and cut as many pieces as possible in the space you have.

The information in this article was taken from "Stitch it Up a Notch: How to Piece Perfect Quilts"

Learn how to cut and piece your quilts perfectly with this full color digital guidebook and over 2 hours of video demonstrations!

 

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