Taunton's Threads - For people who love to sew
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From the pages of Threads magazine Rotary Cutters and Mats Choose the right ones and your scissors may just spend a lot of time in the drawer by Judith Neukam
Cutting a seam with a rotary cutter’s razor-sharp circular blade is often as easy as a wave of your arm. And because they cause much less arm and hand strain than scissors, rotary cutters are ideal for arthritis sufferers. Most cutters work for either the right or left hand. Using a rotary cutter requires a special mat underneath the fabric to protect your table and the cutter’s blade. Large mats are expensive—the main drawback to rotary cutting. I’ll tell you how to ease that expense below.
Blade diameters determine the handle size and range from 18 mm to 65 mm (approxi-mately 3/4 inch to 2-1/2 inches). Smaller cutters navigate tight curves such as armholes or necklines. Larger ones cut through heavier fabrics, loftier thicknesses, and more layers, and they move effortlessly along a straight or moderately curved seam. Alternative cutting edges include blades for pinking or scalloping, which are interchangeable and far less expensive than their corresponding shears. Circle and point cutters provide unique cutting for specialized use. All brands offer replacement blades, but you can extend the life of your blade by having it professionally sharpened or by sharpening it yourself.
You can send dull blades to a professional sharpening service or you can use the TriSharp rotary-blade sharpener (right) for 28-mm, 45-mm, and 60-mm blades Mats protect table and blade Designed to protect your work surface and the life of your blade, cutting mats are usually printed with a right-angle grid and show a 45-degree diagonal line for bias cutting. Mats come in an unlimited range of sizes, shapes, and custom cuts. You can find larger sizes online or at sewing or quilt shows. Unless it was designed to fold or roll, store your mat flat on a dedicated surface, hang it on a wall, or leave it in a suitable environment that protects it from extreme temperatures and buckling. And to prolong the life of your mat, you should never iron on it.  Sandwich mats come in a variety of styles (left to right): Fiskars folding mat, Clover mat with built-in hanging hook, revolving Olfa mat, and small Omnigrid mat for quilters. Solid mats from Sewing Emporium (left to right): big mat, 1-inch-wide strip mat, and Economy rolled mat. There are three basic types of mats Flexible, milky white pinnable mats have the softest surface of all the mats—soft enough to pin into, hence the name, but also soft enough to cut into. They are solid polyethylene and designed for use on both sides. One problem with pinnable mats is that the cut edge of fabric can get embedded if your blade is dull; the fabric edge distorts when you lift it away from the mat. Today’s most readily available mats—sandwich mats—are thinner than pinnable ones and made from a hard, high-density PVC center layered between polyethylene outer surfaces. The hard core stops the blade from cutting through the mat but not from cutting through the outer layer. You can find these mats in fabric stores, online, and by mail order. The Big Mat created by the Sewing Emporium is solid 30–40 percent recycled PVC polypropylene styrenate. The nearly impenetrable composition allows you to cut on the surface of the mat and not into it, which prolongs the life of your blades and doesn’t allow fabric edges to poke into the board. These mats come with a burnisher to refresh the surface. You can order them cut to any size, with standard round sizes available, with or without printed grid lines. They have a five-year guarantee, but Anna Mazur, our pattern-review author, has used hers for over 10. All three mat types listed above cost about the same: about $100 for a 4-foot by 8-foot sheet. Sewing Emporium also makes a 4-foot by 8-foot solid vinyl styrene bargain mat for under $40. With good treatment, it will last for 10 years. Alternatively, if you don’t mind doing without the grid lines, go to your local office-supply store and buy a low-cost mat designed to protect floors from office-chair wheels.
You can damage the surface of your mat when you use dull blades that require extra pressure to get through the fabric. TriSharp makes a mat smoother and Sewing Emporium makes a mat eraser to polish out surface flaws—but prevention is still the best method. Keep your blades in good shape and only use as much pressure as it takes to get through the fabric so you don’t gouge the mat.
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