Cutting and Marking Tips

If you can afford only one new investment piece for your sewing room, I'd have to say a good chair would be it. (Sewing on a kitchen chair is bound to hurt your back) But if you can afford two, I'd say a cutting table with mat would have to be next.

My cutting table is not huge, it's about 30" X 60." But it's been worth it's weight in gold as far as saving stress on my knees (cutting on the floor), back (cutting on the kitchen table), and hands (cutting with shears.)

Rotary cutting, I've found, is faster and more accurate than cutting with shears. The fabric and pattern remain flat and motionless.

Darn-it, rotary blades are expensive....so I only buy them when they are 40-50% off at JoAnn's (or I order them via tailor supply catalogs such as Atlanta Thread Supply or Banasch's.)

A 45mm blade is great for all purpose. I also have a smaller blade for detailed areas, though I rarely bother to switch. It takes a small bit of getting used to when you start cutting garment pieces with a wheel, and you may be afraid to "miss" but it really won't take long at all to get used to it.

If you are fortunate enough to have a cutting table and mat, why not use it for cutting paper patterns as well as fabric? I have two rotary tools. One I reserve for paper. Most of the time when blades have become too dull for fabric, they are still fine for paper. So I switch the used fabric blade to the paper cutter.

I've found that those rotary blade "sharpeners" don't work very well.

"Pet hair sponges" otherwise known as "dashboard sponges" work well for cleaning lint off the cutting board.

I rarely use more than a couple pins when I'm cutting. I have a set of steel cams from an old IBM machine that someone gave me that are handy weights. I'll also use whatever is close at hand ...pin magnets, tape dispenser, quilting rulers, small children.

Try not to let the fabric length hang off the edge of the table. Better to accordion fold the extra length and pile it at the end.

If you are unsure if you have enough fabric, you can pin all your pieces on, accordion folding the fabric as you go, with pinned tissue inside, until you have all the pieces pinned in the layout. Then unfold a little at a time and proceed with your cutting.

I leave paper pattern pieces pinned (in one or two places only) to the fabric pieces until I'm ready to sew. Otherwise it can be easy to mistake one piece for another (especially since I may cut one week and not sew till the next.)

I rarely cut out the notches or mark dots on pattern pieces. I mark both with small snips (1/8" - 3/16") into the seam allowances. (Two snips for double notches. ) Dots, the shoulder dot for example, can be marked with the same type of snip in the allowance directly opposite the dot. You must be comfortable enough working with pattern pieces to be able to distinguish between a "top of the sleeve dot" snip and a "front sleeve notch" snip of course.

Sometimes joining spots for inset corners or collars are marked with triangles. I don' t mark the triangles. Rather, I use a fine line chalk marker to mark the seamline, on the wrong side, of each piece. It makes for a more precise intersection point. Chalk marks represented by dashed lines below:
Of course in this case you will staystitch just outside the seamline, and the chalk line serves as a guide for that as well. I always mark a line across the end of a dart. I find it difficult, otherwise, to see where the dart ends when I'm sewing it.

Anytime a pattern piece is cut on a fold, mark the center front or back by cutting a little triangular snip off the top of the fold, within the seam allowance of course. In most cases this is at the neckline or waist edge. (It's not usually necessary to mark the center at the hems.) Don't forget to make the same CF and CB marks on the facings.

You can quickly mark internal details like pocket placement or darts with stickers or low-tack tapes.

Chalk lines on thicker fabrics tend to rub off. I mark first with chalk, then go over those lines with thread tracing so that my marks will remain over days or weeks of construction.

The more precise the detail you're marking needs to be, the more precise your marking method needs to be. You can sharpen your cake chalks with sandpaper. I also like the wheeled chalk markers that look like fingers, or, even better, the Chalkoner. Note: Chalk can stain fabrics, especially the colored chalks. Test first.

I find cutting to be the most important, and most challenging, part of the sewing process. So I do it when I am most alert and energetic, in the morning. I would never cut when I am tired or distracted.