How to Use a Rotary Cutter

Once you’ve selected the fabrics you’ll use for your How To Quilt sampler, and the yardage is pressed and prepared for cutting, we’ll get out our rotary cutters and get to work!

Good rotary cutter technique does a couple really important things: it keeps your fingers safe from the sharp blade of the cutter, and it gets more accurate results. Things like keeping the safety on whenever you’re not actively cutting and keeping fingers out of the way of the blade are NOT NEGOTIABLE and should really become second nature for you.

There are also ways to use the rotary cutter in unison with the clear acrylic ruler and gridded cutting mat to get very accurate cuts, which makes your sewing simpler and your results more consistent. The video below walks through how to do that!

Do you HAVE to use a rotary cutter and mat? Of course not. You can just as easily skip this lesson and head straight for the block patterns that follow, mark the measurements for the pieces on your fabric, and cut with shears. But if you’ve never quilted or cut with a rotary cutter before, it might be THE tool that transforms quilting into Your Thing!

In the next How To Quilt lesson: we master the 1/4″ seam allowance so our blocks turn out the correct size, every time.