Rotary cutters

Joan commented on my last post about oiling my rotary cutter blades and I want to say thanks and pass that idea on. I never thought about oiling the blades; maybe others hadn't either. I do try to keep my cutters ready for action. Several years ago I bought a whetstone arrangement for taking the burrs off rotary blade edges, although it doesn't really sharpen them. It's like using a steel on your kitchen knives; it straightens the edge and takes out waves and burrs. It's very useful and I find that it extends the life of my blades. Unfortunately, I'm rather cheap on buying blades and continue to use them long after I should have chucked them. I changed the 45 mm cutter blade this morning and tried it out, and it was like, WHOA! That was easy. So I need to take better care of them.

I also remembered that I had a small cutter! I had forgotten about it since I hadn't used it for ages. I bought it to use with Shar Jorgensen's template sets, and it was packed away. I exhumed it and tried out the Winner's Bouquet templates. They are wonderful! Very easy to cut out with the small cutter. One thing I am going to invest in for using templates like this is a rotating cutter mat. I don't have one yet and have relied on using my smallest mat and scooting it around manually.

But, believe the manufacturer when they recommend putting Invisigrip on the back of the templates. They are a bit slippery, especially when compared to the Creative Grid rulers with the non-slip grippy dots. Those rulers, BTW, beat my old Omnigrid rulers hands down. Very stable and not slippery, and no Invisigrip required.

I got out my Meadowbrook scraps and cut out four Winner's Bouquet blocks just to try it out, and the curves go together so smoothly. Don't be leery of the rounded edges. These are very gentle curves that practically fall together. A few pins and you're there.
Don't you love that jump-start you get from a new tool or pattern, when you want to plunge in and sew, sew, sew?