Tips & Tricks: fussy cutting with a square ruler

I’m working on one of those special quilts that I can only show you snippets of right now and found myself thinking of you all as pulled out my washi tape for some help cutting.  Washi tape?  Why yes…I use it all the time because it’s adorable and makes me happy and you can put it on anything.  Many of my tips will probably involve the use of washi tape. 😉

But back to the tip.  I was fussy cutting some gorgeous unicorns from Heather Ross’ yet to be re-released line Far Far Away (released in July I think) and the ruler that I was using was not an exact match to the dimension I needed to cut.  They rarely are!  So out came the washi tape to provide a clear visual divider of the 3 1/2″ x 3 1/2″ square that I needed.

So I could place the acrylic square ruler directly on the fabric and see exactly where to place it so that I could get as much of the unicorn into my cut as possible at this dimension.  Sometimes I cut directly from the large piece like this. But other times, I would cut a rough swatch out and then use a small rotating cutting mat with my fancy washi covered ruler to cut out my perfect fussy cut square.

I would line up the ruler with the washi tape at the top because I needed to get that unicorn head in and then trim away the bottom two sides.  A quick turn of the mat and a flip of the ruler and I could cut the other two remaining sides.  This was all especially helpful because I was cutting the pieces on the bias as well.  I had a lot of problems to overcome here.  And it was washi tape to the rescue!

Do you have any tips for fussy cutting?  We’d love to hear them!