I remember having a board covered with sandpaper - put the fabric on the sandpaper, the templates on the fabric, and draw around (on the sewing line, mind you, NOT the cutting line) in pencil. Cut with scissors, leaving "approximately" 1/4 inch around the pencil lines. My first quilt was made of blocks "from the Bible" (although I helped my 11 year old daughter with her "Tumbler" quilt and another biographical one she designed before I began quilting). My first quilt book (not from the library) was by Georgia Bonesteel and I think I made every quilt in that book. One of them, all in pieced muslin, is hanging on my back door window as a curtain! I made lots of those string-pieced vests (one of these days I'm going to cut them up and make book (or nook) covers out of them!