Bernie's Mittens QAL Week One: Cutting

Welcome to Week One of the Bernie's Mittens Quilt-Along!  I'm so glad you decided to join us!  The pattern is still on sale in my pattern shop if you need a copy, and I'm donating $2 from the sale of each pattern to my local food bank through the end of October!

Full disclosure, I am not normally a pre-cutter.  And if you feel the same way and plan on starting next week and cutting as you go, I completely understand.  I tend to get impatient halfway through the cutting stage and have to start sewing just to see how things are going to look.  I've never regretted pre-cutting a quilt, I just don't do it often!  But for this quilt-along, I buckled down and did it.  Everything is the same width, so it is less daunting than a pattern with completely different-sized pieces.  I started by ironing all of my fabrics and cutting them into long strips (the pattern tells you how many of each color to cut).

After a quick look of admiration at my fabrics (the playing card suits are from Memories by Cecile Metzger for Figo Fabrics and the pink is Chalk and Charcoal in Rose by Jennifer Sampou), I was ready to cut my pattern pieces.  Because I already had all my strips cut, there was no ironing and this part went really fast!

The pattern includes labels for your cut pattern pieces which can be used as a cutting guide as well.  (I'm using felt Quilt Letters (not an affiliate link, just something I use all the time!) because I like how they "stick" to the fabric pieces, but it's definitely not a requirement.)

In the lower right corner, I noted my color choices for this version of the pattern (the yardage is the overall yardage of the color, not really necessary in the cutting stage).  Then, in each box, I used tally marks to note how many of that piece I had already cut - the blurred out area tells you the piece size so you can cut your entire quilt out using just this page!  For each strip, start with the longest cut required from that color, then cut what you can from the excess.  For example, after cutting two K pieces from one strip, there was enough left to cut two N pieces.  So I cut all four, then marked two tally marks in the K square and 2 in the N square.  You can print out two copies of the labels page - one to cut apart and mark your cut pieces and one to keep track of your cutting as you go along!

And that's it for Week One!  To get email reminders about the quilt-along, you can sign up for the BluePip Designs newsletter.  If you still need the Bernies's Mittens pattern, you can purchase it from my pattern shop.  I'd love to see your progress - tag me @bluepipdesigns on Instagram and use the hashtag #BerniesMittensQAL so everyone else can see it too!  Next week we start the fun part - sewing our first strips together!