I’m totally a craft sewer, mostly handbags and have only been sewing for about a year. I’ve struggled with cutting out pattern pieces, I never get them even and consistent. Let me see if I’ve got the process correct:
1. Cut the shape of your pattern. Cut just inside the dark edge (basically shouldn’t be any dark outside lines remaining.
2. Place this pattern on your fabric. Don’t pin it down, but weight it down with some kind of weights.
3. Using a chalk pencil, or wax pencil, or medium of choice…trace the shape directly onto your fabric. When tracing, try to run your pencil along the edge of the pattern and the fabric at the same time.
4. Using scissors, cut on the tracing line.

Question:
1. I’m assuming this means you wouldn’t cut out two pieces at once….(one on top of the other…)
2. Cutting ‘on the fold’ has always given me
fits, I try to iron my folds down hard, but still I can never get the pattern pinned exactly on the fold consistently. I’m thinking it’s better to make a full pattern and ditch the fold?
3. What does DE mean?

Thanks, this is fun!
Cindy

But, I do have to say that rotary cutting in quilting can be perfectly accurate as long as you take the time. I never got good cutting results with scissors and straight lines in quilting. I haven’t used mine for pizza, but I do use one with a pinking blade to cut out pie crust lattice for my cherry pies. Clean it up afterward, and it’s ready to go back in the sewing room.

For tracing patterns, I use Pigma Micron pens and I trace my patterns onto heavy-weight interfacing. This is stable, doesn’t seem to wear down like paper, and I can pin-fit it if I need to. Plus, these pieces can be folded away for storage. Afte a light pressing with a barely warm iron, they are ready to be used again and again.

For marking, I use the chalk cartridge with changeable colors that someone else mentioned. It comes with a sharpener, so I get great lines. The only drawback is that sometimes the chalk doesn’t come out, especially if you iron over it … as we must when pressing seams, darts, and hems.

“Pretty nice” is not perfect, unfortunately. I have yet to find a 12″ bent trimmer with bows (handles) that are comfortable with the blades held in line with my forearm. The holes are too small and not nearly angled enough. (I have medium-sized male hands.) This makes a big difference when you are cutting at arm’s length. JC Sprowls has a post on the forums showing a set of traditional tailor’s shears with huge, acutely angled bows that almost look like basket hilts on a sword. I am envious, never having had the pleasure of using shears like that.

For very fine detail, I drop the 12″ bent trimmer for Gingher knife-edge 4″ tailor scissors. Other than 3 or 4 sets of thread snips in various drawers, those two sizes of shears (and the rotary cutter for straight lines) are about all I use. Oh, and a set of “tin snip” shears that I will break out when working with heavy tagboard or plastic.

BTW, I echo Kathleen’s unhappiness with the current Wiss bent trimmers. I got a 10″ model 20W (extra heavy) a year or two ago and my first impression was “crude construction”. I had to grind sharp edges off the outside of the blades to make it comfortable to use.

I trace my patterns with tailor’s wax crayon or chalk, depending on what the fabric is. I use blue crayon a lot, and the edges of my patterns are probably worse looking than Kathleen’s Sharpie-traced example.

When I am tracing patterns to make other patterns (fixing fit, or messing around with style features), I use extra fine point Sharpie, or Sanford Uniball micro ball-point pen. Both of those can make an unholy mess on fabric, but neither one leaves the same kind of “ring” around the pattern as a regular size Sharpie, and they leave very fine lines on paper.

I don’t claim that any of the above is “best practice”.

I mostly only use the rotary cutter to cut out straight pieces and only against a ruler.

The scissors I use are the lightweight Gingher ones that are all plastic except the actual blades. It saves wear on the hands and wrists but I don’t know if they’re the perfect cutting scissors anyway.

The only time I use the tracing paper is to mark darts or pocket placement on one-offs.

However, my goal as an enthusiast (sew a few garments that fit me in fabrics that I like) is very different than a manufacturer (produce multiple garments that are exactly alike in size and fit to meet the requirements of my customers).

Regarding quilting: It took a while to become skillful enough to consistently cut accurate quilt patches. Accuracy can come down to “Where do I line up the edge of the fabric on the ruler markings: left side of the line, right side of the line? The correct answer is exactly on the CENTER of the line.
Image of popular Omnigrid rotary ruler, illustrating the markings. Some quilt authors and instructors suggest angling the rotary blade so it’s snugged up exactly on the bottom edge of the ruler because the width of the blade as it rests against the ruler edge at 90 degrees adds a tiny amount to the cut.

And we haven’t even touched on accurate and consistent 1/4 inch seams. It sounds picky and fussy until you consider a quilt block like this one with multiple seams across the width of the block which compounds any measuring and seam width errors.
Traditional quilt block, based an 8×8 patch layout

You might need only 30 blocks like that, all exactly the same size, for a bed quilt. Over 1500 individual patches and Gawd knows how many seams. Accuracy counts. Have fun.

Claire-Marie