Friday, August 07, 2020

Right-Sized and Cut Out


CriCut success achieved after several attempts. I buckled down and figured out the re-sizing thing with the SVG files and was able to cut out the pieces for the Cotton Candy pouch for friend Jaye. Cutting out the cotton fabrics and the Shape Flex (fusible woven interfacing) was easy peasy. 
But then there was the Bosal In-R-Form, fusible foam pieces that needed to be cut. This material is quite thick, so I looked up tips on cutting out thicker materials as I haven't done anything on the CriCut except cardstock and cotton fabric. The first suggestion I found was to use the regular grip mat (note the green) instead of the fabric grip one (the pink one above). The second suggestion was to select "Felt" as the material and to switch from the rotary cutting blade to the fine point blade (basically an e-xacto blade). I watched as the machine went around this rectangle two times. And it did not successfully cut through the whole thing. It got through the foam layers, but not the backing material. 

I switched back to the rotary cutter and selected "Heavy Fabric" and it was perfectly fine.
Another tip was to use a brayer to really get the material stuck down to the mat. My brayer has ink on it, so I used my smaller Clover seam roller instead. I concentrated my efforts especially around the edges and where the foam was a little wrinkled. It's not like you can iron this stuff, since it's a fusible. I found that it worked very very well, there were no problems off it shifting or bunching or moving at all.
Here's how it looks after cutting, lifting up the corner to see if it went through, huzzah, yes

And here's the curvy piece all cut out, this would be very hard for me to cut accurately, so I was happy I got the CriCut to work. All of this work was part of learning how to use a new tool, and I'm glad Jaye asked me to try it out.
All the pieces are finally cut out and sent off to friend Jaye, I hope she finds my fabric choices acceptable <g>
 

And yes I cut out a set of bag pieces for myself to try out making this very cute bag.

1 comment:

  1. Yes, I got the pieces and was impressed with the cutting. I am so intrigued by this machine!!! The pieces look really great and I can't wait to sew them together!

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