Project Plan Example
This is a real example of a project plan to cut 35 five-pointed stars for my mother. She only needed 34 stars but I added 1 extra for her to have a spare. It's good to cut an extra or 2 just in case there is a shape that did not cut correctly.
Complex blocks such as this requires a project plan to get the most economical use of the fabric and keep track of all the pieces. The idea of a project plan is that you arrange the shapes for each fabric to get the full use of a 20 inch width of fabric. The goal is to arrange the shapes to cut multiple layers of the same cutting plan and have the fewest number of cutting plans. In this example there are 8 different cutting plans with a total of 14 layers, so the laser is only run 8 times.
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Cutting Plans
The project plan describes how to rough cut the fabric for each cutting plan and how many layers are needed. I made a chart to double check the total number of each shape in each cutting plan and a grand total for the project. I added up the amount of fabric I would need based on a 44" WOF - circled in red. Making a project plan takes a little time to figure out, but it is well worth the time.
Breaking it down...
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Start by separating the shapes into groups according to the fabric to be cut. If the block uses the same shape for more than 1 fabric, you can group those together.
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Calculate how many copies of each shape you need for each fabric. In this block Shapes B, D, and G are the same shape that will be cut from the same fabric.
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Start building cutting plan #1 by adding as many copies of the shape as you can in one row. In this example, I need 105 Shape B. I can fit 15 shapes in each row and 4 rows in one cutting plan. This is a total of 60. I need 45 more (only 3 more rows). I start cutting plan #2 with 3 rows of Shape B.
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For Shape J, I need 35. I can fit 4 in each row and 16 per layer. Cutting 2 layers makes 32. This is cutting plan #3. I need 3 more Shape J. I can fit one row of Shape J in the bottom of Cutting Plan #2. I have an extra Shape J, which is OK.
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If each star was going to be cut from a different fabric, the layout would be very different. You would only have 1 layout for the star shapes which would be 1 Shape J and 3 Shape B. The number of layers = number of blocks = number of different fabrics.
