Many comments here I agree with. Purple the back shall be! And also ignore the lines on your cutting mat. Line up a perpendicular line on your ruler with the folded edge of your fabric. Try cutting from the opposite side of your table for the first cut - if your arms are long enough! - and then start measuring your cuts from the 'clean' edge of the fabric. I only cut 2 layers as well...feel I have more control and don't have to worry about 'v' s or 'doglegs' with multiple folds of the fabric.

You did a fine job for your first quilt. And if your daughter wants purple for the backing go for it. It will be beautiful.

I agree with everyone else--if she wants purple, then purple it should be. Welcome to the board, and your quilt is very pretty. I really like your colors. Don't worry about the squares and cut one or two at a time at first and you will be cutting many more layers in no time. Practice practice practice.
Sue

I'm a newbie quilter as well, started back in Oct. Along with this great board and a wonderful LQS I went to youtube and watched a bunch of videos on everything. I even watched different ones of the same technique. I google a lot of techniques, names and quilt themes to see what my style.

Wow! Amazing info and so much help!
 

Thank you all so much! I bought the :thumbup:

Welcome to our family, I'm sure there are many here that can help you out. I'm relatively new to quilting myself, and I cut the stripes as required double check the measurements, then I layer the stripes on top of each other, clean up the selvage so you've got a straight cut and then cut up the squares to the dimensions needed.

Hi and welcome! I am fairly new too, but I can cut pretty well with my rotary cutter. For me, the trick is pressing down with the ruler. You have to have a firm hold on it when you cut. There are also some little rubber things you can get that attach to your rulers to keep them from sliding around on your fabric. I got mine at JoAnn's, but other places probably have them too.

As for the purple ... well, I guess if that's what she wants, I would probably do it. I once let my teenager paint her bedroom a purplish-gray and red! It was hideous, but it was her room and her choice. Later, after she'd moved out and come back from college, she asked why we let her do that, and we told her that it was her room and we wanted to give her a say in the decorating of it. (I am happy to report that her taste has improved!) LOL

Hi, and welcome to the board. Here you'll find some wonderful advise that you might not find the time to quilt. We're all family and willing to help. Happy quilting.

Morning Ladies

I would like to add three things to help make your cutting more than one block at a time possible. First, startch your fabric really stiff. That helps take some of the stretch out of the fabric. Next, make sure your rotary blade is really sharp and not dull. Third, you can buy small circles of fine sandpaper that sticks to the back of your ruler so that it doesn't slip. Also being a woodworker, I just use regular self-sticking fine sandpaper and cut my own strips or dots to glue to the back of the rulers.

Along with holding firmly I spread my fingers out across the ruler and is possible place my pinky on the fabric snug up against the the ruler. This also keeps it from slipping.