Sew Colette - Metal washers

Hello everyone! It's time to get started on our muslins but to be honest, I haven't even cut mine out yet :( It was a spur of the moment thing, but I ended up getting tattooed last night, so that means that I wasn't productive sewing wise. I'm ready to write about sewing though!

To those of you that didn't participate in the first part of the sew-along, please make sure you have your correct measurements before getting started. If you need help then see this post.

Before reading the Colette Sewing Handbook I struggled with cutting out my fabric. I would cut out the pattern, pin it to the fabric, and awkwardly cut around it. My cuts weren't as precise as they could have been and it was a struggle going around the paper. In the book Sarai suggested placing metal washers on top of the pattern, tracing around it, removing the pattern, and then cutting the fabric from the lines you had created. I did this with my Meringue skirt and it made cutting a breeze! There were no shaky cuts on my fabric and it was less of a fight between me and my scissors :)

You can get washers at any hardware store. My husband got mine at Miner's (isn't he sweet?) for $0.50 each and he got the biggest ones he could find. I'm sure that you could use other things that are flat and heavy to keep the pattern in place, but I really like using the washers because they can easily be packed away in a little box and stored with my sewing stuff. Have any of you tried using Sarai's technique? What did you think?