How to Cut WOF Strips

WHAT IS "WIDTH OF FABRIC"?

If you've made a quilt or two before, then you're likely familiar with the term "width of fabric" (abbreviated as WOF). This is often a common starting place for cutting instruction for many quilt patterns, so if you haven't encountered it yet, then you will in the future! 

Typical quilting cotton WOF is usually around 42"-44". It's stored on what's called a "bolt", which is just a large roll of fabric like you see here. 

Fabric is stored on the bolt folded in half with the two selvedges aligning. Often selvedges will be frayed or have a printed label on them.

Let's say you need to cut a 2.5" x WOF strip. This means that your strip will be 2.5" by the WOF (~42" give or take). Quilt patterns will often assume that your usable width of fabric is around 42", so you want to make sure that your fabric is indeed what you're expecting it to be before you start cutting. If it isn't, you might need more fabric than what the pattern tells you you'll need.

FABRIC GRAIN

One important thing to note is that quilting cotton is a woven fabric, meaning tiny threads are woven together in a horizontal and vertical direction. These two thread directions are referred to as the Warp (lengthwise grain) and Weft (cross grain). If you are cutting straight pieces, you’ll want to cut your pieces so that they are parallel and perpendicular with those warp and weft threads. If the piece is cut slightly crooked from those threads, then the edges of your piece can become stretchy and warped, which can be tricky to work with.

NOTE - if you are sewing curves, certain pieces of clothing or creating biased binding, then you want your cuts to be diagonal across the warp and weft threads. This is called the "bias" and it has more stretch to it than "on-grain" fabric does. 

Another important thing to note is that since fabric is folded and stored on a bolt, it isn't always folded perfectly straight. If you've ever cut a WOF strip and the fabric around the fold has a bend to it, this is why. 

PRESS & RE-FOLD

This means that it's always a good idea to assess the fold of your fabric before you start cutting your WOF strips. This helps ensure that you're cutting WOF strips that are perfectly "on-grain" and straight. There are a variety of ways to do this....you can rip your fabric, you can pull a thread from the selvedge... everyone has their preferred method. For me, I simply refold my fabric if needed and go from there. 

I'll be the first to admit that I sometimes don't do this with *every* quilt. Let's face it: for some quilts, it matters more than others. For example, I'm using the Getaway quilt pattern in this tutorial, found here and with this pattern, we're using all WOF strips to subcut more strips. We're using the full WOF piece, so making sure our fabric is square prior to cutting is extremely important. But with a pattern like Nightingale, I'm cutting squares from WOF strips and really, it isn't quite as noticeable if my pieces get just a tiny bit "off". Don't tell the quilt police! But any time you're strip piecing the entire WOF strip, or just using the entire WOF strip for sub-cuts, you'll want to make sure that your piece is square around the fold before you get started. 

If you pre-wash your fabric, you'll be doing this anyways, since the fold will no longer be there. But if you don't prewash (like me), then you can iron or "press" your original fold  so that it's nice and flat. While you're at it, go ahead and press your entire fabric piece so that it's without folds or creases. If you plan to starch, now is the time to do so.

Then to re-fold your fabric, you'll want to align your two selvedges as perfectly as you can. There are a few ways to do this, but one method that I found helpful is if you lift up your fabric so that you have one selvedge in between your middle and pointer fingers and the other selvedge in between your pointer fingers and thumbs. Lift up on the fabric so that the fold is hanging down in front of you. Note that I am working with 1-5/8 yards, so I have some of the yardage off to one side. This amount will vary based on how much yardage you are working with. 

As you are doing this, make sure that the the new fold of fabric is draping without a ripple. Move your fingers around until it looks nice and smooth.

The two selvedges should be perfectly aligned at this point. Now you're ready to iron a new fold in your fabric. 

If you look closely, you can see where the old fold was and now where my new, perfectly straight fold is.

If you're working with a larger cut of yardage, you'll likely need to do this process in segments as seen below. You can see the left portion of my yardage is what I just refolded and the right portion of my fabric still needs to be refolded. So for a 1-5/8 yard piece, I refolded and pressed a new crease in three segments. You might need to do more or less segments based on how much fabric you're working with.

Repeat until all of your yardage is refolded and pressed with a new crease.

THE ACCORDION FOLD

Now you're *almost* ready to start cutting. I've found that the key to success with this is to fold the fabric "accordion-style" so that it's easy to work with. This is a "back and forth" type of fold that easily allows you to pull fabric from the top of the pile without it being a tangled mess. 

To do this, hold all of your fabric up in the air and lay down a small segment, ~9" or so. Move your arms back and forth as you lower the fabric down onto the pile. It doesn't need to be exact or perfect, but having the fabric go back and forth like this just keeps it nice and organized as you are cutting. Plus it helps decrease harsh creases and wrinkles!

Now you're ready to cut!

Moving forward, keep in mind that I am right handed. If you are left handed, you'll likely want to flip the orientation of what you see here. :)

When cutting WOF strips, you are cutting from selvedge to selvedge. I am someone who doesn't like to fold my fabric too much prior to cutting. Many people fold their fabric in half again so that the fold is on top of the selvedges, meaning you cut through 4 layers at a time. You're welcome to do that if you would like. For me, I just like to use my 6" x 24" or 8.5" x 24" ruler and only cut through two layers at once.

CUTTING STRIPS

First I am going to make a fresh cut. Since I just refolded my fabric and created a new fold that's nice and square with my selvedges, I'm going to use that fold as my guide. 

Align a horizontal line in your ruler with the fold of your fabric. Move your ruler over so that you're not cutting away too much fabric. Make sure that you're cutting away enough so that you create a fresh edge on both layers. 

Trim off just enough to give you a new clean edge.

Now realign the fold of your fabric with a horizontal line in your ruler. Then align your desired measurement (for me it's 2.5") with the fresh edge of fabric that you just created. 

When using a long ruler, you'll want to walk your non-dominant hand up the ruler so that it stays somewhat aligned to where your dominant hand is with the rotary blade.

Repeat for however many strips you need and viola!

Since your fabric is perfectly refolded, your strip should be straight around the fold. What a beautiful sight. :)

The pattern featured above is Getaway, found here in our shop.

To take it a step further, this is what I like to do for sub-cutting. 

SUB CUTTING

"Sub cutting" simply refers to a cut that you make after the initial cut. So if you're cutting WOF strips to then cut squares from those strips, you're sub cutting those squares from the WOF strips. So often times the pattern will read:

• Cut (1) 2.5" x WOF strip
• subcut (4) 2.5" x 10.5" pieces

This means from the initial (1) 2.5" x WOF strip, you'll cut that strip into (4) 2.5" x 10.5" pieces. 

To do this, place the strip horizontally so that the selvedge end is on the right and the fold is on the left.

1. Place a ruler over the strip and align the edge of the strip with a horizontal line in the ruler.
2. Trim off the selvedge. Remember to look at your usable WOF... you don't want to trim off too much! Some fabrics are notorious for having extra wide selvedges.
3. Flip the strip around (or rotate the cutting mat around) 180 degrees. I like to cut two pieces at a time. You could also unfold the WOF strip and cut one piece at a time. Align the fresh edge with the vertical desired measurement in the ruler. In this case, it's 10.5".
4. Align the perpendicular edge with a horizontal line in the ruler.
5. Cut the desired measurement to the right of the ruler.

Remember that it's always best to use the lines on your ruler whenever possible. This will give you a more accurate and consistent cut.

I hope you found this tutorial helpful!

Brittany

This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase that item through my link, I may receive a small commission from your purchase at no cost to you. I only recommend products that I know and love!