This is how she taught me to start cutting and all of that...
You take your piece of material and you go by your lines on your cutting mat to even up the material as much as possible and than you take your long skinny or wide ruler, get it straight on one of the edges of your material and than cut off the uneven edges.
That is the first thing that you do.
The second thing that you do is that you start cutting your strips for your squares/triangles and when you cut your strips you need to cut your strips as straight as possible..that is very important. You want your strip long enough so when you cut your squares than you will have enough to cut all of your squares for a particular size out of that strip. Now for me I took my 3 inch size square ruler and I square up the material and I just used my lines on my 3 inch size square ruler to get my measurements that I needed and just start cutting away on my strips. I still have two more strips yet to cut yet for my other set of squares that I need that will be in between each star block.
I hope I explained this right....
You must first Iron your piece of material first before you start cutting to get the wrinkles out of it.
I have enough material left over that I can play with it and do something else with my scraps of material.
Thanks for all of your beautiful comments....
I'm going to wait awhile before I post pictures because I have it in a bag and I don't want to get my pieces mixed up.
I am getting a tooth pulled next Wednesday and I will be staying with a friend of mine too for a few days so I may or may not be on this message board for a few days Starting on Wednesday just so you will know.