Cutting Multiple Pieces Trick

It's tutorial day today! This one is about cutting multiple pieces of fused fabric, saving a ton of time!

While working on my Whatamelon runner, 

I was faced with cutting many seeds and rind lines from fusible fabric. Normally, I trace my design onto the paper side of a fusible product, then cut around the shape 1/4" on either side of the traced line. This removes the center fusible portion, cutting down on the stiffness from the layers of fusible and fabric.

Ah, but these seeds are rather small, and not worth the time to use that technique. The amount of stiffness they'll have from being completely backed by fusible will hardly be noticed.

Now, I could have taken the time to draw up the seeds and have the die cutting machine do the work. But these are such simple shapes that I decided to tackle it by hand, using a slick trick for cutting out multiple pieces at once.

For this project, I had a printed template of two rows of seeds.

After cutting fabric rectangles to cover the template size and applying fusible, I was set for the magic!

First step, stack all pieces, making a fused-fabric/fused-fabric/template sandwich.

My template for both the seeds and the melon rind lines are right side up. Therefore, the fabric should also be right side up. If the pattern is reversed, then the fusible will be right side up (fabric side down).

Using my 'Magic Stapler' (or just a standard stapler!), all layers are stapled together OUTSIDE of the pieces for applique. Nobody wants holes in their pieces for quilting!

By using as many staples as necessary to hold the layers together, I then cut away! Before I knew it, all my seeds were cut and ready to go.

So, the next time you have a lots of fusible pieces to cut, remember this magic trick!

Happy Quilting!