I started PP'ing a month ago and I started with a simple pattern. I learned the technique from YouTube,which has tons of videos on the subject. At first, I was wasting fabric but I was only making a few blocks for a pieced quilt so I wasn't concerned. Now, I know what I'm doing and just grab pieces from my scrap bag. I never got in the habit of pre-cutting but I would likely not do that anyway now that I know how to do it efficiently. So, I've made just blocks so far. I have a whole PP quilt project I'll be doing this year so we'll see how it goes. I use cheap copy paper for my foundation paper. And, there are a lot of PP patterns free on the net so that helps.