I bought just enough fabric and I cut the squares already. I just didn't want to cut them into triangles and then make the HST. I prefer the other method. I will do a very scant 1/4 inch from the edge of the pencil line. I am using these for the batik block exchange and need to make sure my blocks measure perfectly. Thanks for the double check... Thinking back, I probably should have cut to 7 inch and then trimmed. It would have made cutting the squares a lot faster and easier and would have been better in case of mistakes