Our Silhouette Cameo machines have been getting so much use lately, that we noticed the Cameo 3 was not reliably able to keep up with demand. So we bought another machine…and while we were at it, we bought some fun new blades for you all to use! For use on either of the Cameo 5 machines, we now have an engraving tool, kraft blades, and a rotary tool. We played around with the rotary blade to give you an idea of what you can do with it!
The rotary blade can cut designs in fabric! It works best with thin fabrics, and struggles with thicker fabrics that require more pressure. For example, we have thin felt and a thicker, craft felt. It worked well on the thin felt, but we had to switch to the kraft blade for the thicker craft felt.
When the fabric is too thick, or the pressure is too high, it causes the blade to get stuck, the gears jump, and it causes a shift along the x-axis, which throws your whole cut off.
While we were playing around with the blade, we noticed a few things that we thought we would share!
- The fabric needs to be STUCK down and unable to drag or move, or else the rotary blade gets stuck, gears jam, and an x-axis shift occurs. So, choose the stickiest mat you can find, use a brayer to flatten the fabric down, and tape all edges. We also found that if you plan to use double sided fusible interfacing with your fabric, that can also help it stick better to the mat.
- The force and speed will depend on your fabric, but we found that what works with most fabrics is a force of 17-21 and a speed of 5-7.
- We found that removing the blade cover reduces the frequency of fabric jams
Sample Project:
The above project had double sided interfacing on all fabric pieces which really helped secure them in place to be cut. This project was made as part of our April Make and Take, Whimsical napkins!
