I recently spent about an hour with a quilting friend, teaching her a piecing technique. She cuts towards herself. Let me tell you, it DROVE ME NUTS!!! And my mom is a beginning quilter, she keeps putting down her cutter with the blade locked open - another thing that drives me nuts! I am getting her a new cutter that closes automatically for Christmas - she is very accident prone and I just know someday she's going to call me from the ER.