Adobe Quilt Along Week 2: Cutting your fabric.

Let’s start with what you need:

• Fabric
• Cutting mat
• Rotary cutter or scissors
• Multiple ruler sizes (I recommend a 6” x 24” and 6” x 12.” A smaller 6” x 6” is also helpful for guiding templates, but not required.
• Adhesive spray (optional, but very helpful for stabilizing templates)
• Printed templates - check page 14 of the pattern to print only the templates required for your selected size.
• Labeling method (physical or mental) to delineate the fabrics and pieces.

To avoid losing you place or skipping a piece while cutting, I recommend printing the pattern to check off cuts as you go. A few testers opted to label their fabrics using sticky notes or scraps of paper. Personally, I don’t label my pieces, but instead stack them in alphabetical order of the pieces—lay AA down first, stack AB then AC followed by AD, etc. Some method of organization is important because the cutting instructions are not written in alphabetical order, but are broken down by sections accessible from the same WOF strip. They are written to minimize waste—for example, in the baby size when cutting a 5 1/2” x WOF strip of fabric B, you will get pieces BB, BC, (2) BI, and BK. The fabric requirements do provide wiggle room for cutting errors, so don’t panic if you make a mistake.

The good thing about the piecing process is this quilt kind of comes together like a puzzle. Although there are a lot of unique pieces, most fit in only one place. While it may feel overwhelming to keep track of the alphabetical arrangement of the cuts, once the sewing process begins, it becomes easier to visualize how the quilt comes together. Also, the shape of the pieces are consistent throughout every size - the Throw size does not require any more cutting than the Baby size. So while the sizes are different, the time required in the cutting and piecing process is similar in every size.