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Project: B&W Memories Quilt, Cutting Phase

In order to get focused, I always find it helps to have my craft room very tidy. So I cleaned up a bit and got everything out to start cutting into my fabric. I got my lemon water, my music going and I was ready to go. I started to cut one piece of my black kona and it hit me, I purchased yardage of all this fabric and I haven't pre-washed anything! Somehow every time I make a quilt I get all excited to start working and completely forget to prewash my fabric. I really didn't want to waste the hour or so it would take to wash everything, so I decided to Google It! I mean do I really really need to pre-wash? Some thoughts that came to mind, I am using black, but the black is Kona, but then again I am using two different brand fabrics. After researching it I decided better safe than sorry I will pre-wash. How about you guys I'd love to hear your opinions on whether you pre-wash your fabrics or not. What would you have done in my case, for future reference.

To save a little time I quickly hand washed each color separately and then dried them all. Some things I really hate about pre-washing fabric is first the unraveling and tangling I get on my edges, in fact sometimes I end up with a serious mess where different pieces of fabric are completely intertwined with threads and I have to cut my edges off to fix it. Second I hate that every piece has to be pressed nicely before cutting. So time consuming!

When I was pressing my fabrics I noticed a huge difference in the Country Classics and Kona Cotton. The unraveling on the Kona was very minimal and it ironed out nice and crisp very easily. The Country Classics on the other hand was a mess and was so wrinkled that even after ironing it for awhile it still looked wrinkled. Now I am sure you all are thinking well duh! I have learned my lesson, Kona Cotton is worth the $2 more.

Now it was time to start cutting. As you can see from my nice little mess above, I had to pull out the calculator and do a little math. Faith at Fresh Lemon Quilts includes a cutting pattern for the quilt blocks, but they are based on Fat Quarters, and are for only 3 blocks per fat quarter. I was using yardage and would be needing 6 blocks of each. I also was going to be using different colors so I had to decide which shade of gray would go where. After about 30 minutes of thinking it through, I got to work cutting.

Immediately I ran into the same problem I seem to always run into when cutting my fabric. Nothing ever seems to be straight and accurate. There is always a little slipping or something making my cuts uneven. Now recently this was making me pretty frustrated so I purchased InvisiGrip by Omnigrid, which is a clear non-slip material you apply to the back side of your rulers, to help prevent your rulers from slipping when cutting. This definitely made my cutting more accurate, but when I am using longer rulers I still run into problems. Do you all have any suggestions on how to get really accurate pieces?

Once I was done cutting all my pieces, I organized all my blocks A, B, C, D, E, and F into piles and put labels on top of each pile. And then when I was not looking a little sneaky blondie we call "Gwenyth the Menace" came and mixed up my labels! Thanks to my beautiful daughter I spent about 15 minutes figuring out which block was what. So now it was time to start piecing. More to come!

Alyssa

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Creator of Pile O' Fabric

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