A few weeks ago I purchased my first rotary cutter and mat. I know. Way overdue--I had been cutting my fabric with scissors on my dining room table for years. The shame! I was so excited to finally own a rotary cutter, and had even found both it and the mat for half off at Beverly's! I was all pumped to go home and start cutting fabric like a mofo! Once home, I tore it out of it's packaging and rolled that bad boy across some fabric just as intructed, with firm and even pressure. I imagined quick, clean lengths of fabric stacking up faster than I could say "flour sack towel!" And then it happened.
Despite the reassuring sounds of the rotary cutter biting through the fabric, when I lifted one length of fabric from the other, all I saw was a terrible shredded mess of fabric only cut apart every few inches or so. It didn't cut. No--it shredded. And when I tried cutting using more of a back-and-forth pizza cutter motion, it created multiple, randomly spaced slices of fabric, along with a mat full of fabric dust, chopped threads and well, fabric dust. I've tried various pressures, techniques, forward-cutting, backward-cutting, cutting while hanging from the ceiling. Well, not really, but I would have tried it had I thought it would work.
I'm back to using my scissors. I don't get it. I don't know what the big fuss is about rotary cutters! I may have bought a dull one, I may have bought the wrong brand (this is a major brand, and new out of the box). I may not know what the hell I'm doing, but really? Can it be that difficult?
Oh rotary cutter, why hast thou failed me?
Hi there. That sounds like a spectacular rotary cutter fail, and I suspect the blade must have been very bad (when by blades get old, they start "skipping" parts of the fabric they are supposed to cut). Did the cutter come with a second blade you could try?
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post, beadgirl! It didn't come with an alternate blade, but maybe I should try another brand? The one I got (an Olfa) is normally $20 but was on special for $10. Good to hear that it was more likely the blade than user error!
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