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happiness is.............

PostPosted: November 29th, 2016, 4:59 pm
by pigtailpat
a re-stickied mat and fresh blade!

I've cut 16 round fabric circles for a little mini project and with the cougar went off flawlessly. Before cutting the actual project fabric I test cut and found my mat (extra sticky mat for fabric) was not sticky enough (from prior use - and from quite a long time ago), and the blade in the machine not performing well (icky fuzzy cuts).

So I re-stickied my mat, put in a fresh blade and got down to business. Because I was following a particular pattern, I didn't just dump all the circles onto one piece of fabric and cut. I needed different specific sizes to follow a pattern. So I made different pages in one SCAL file (and boy I love that ability), and cut each circle in a linear fashion (go to the page, cut, then I numbered the circle to match my pattern, go on to the next etc). It probably took longer because I wanted to work a specific way, but I didn't want to risk messing up my pattern matching mentally. So I next need to finish digitizing the circles in embroidery software so that the edges of the circles can be entrapped by thread on the embroidery machine. Because SCAL can export to the .fcm format, this is possible! Once I finish the digitizing, the circles I cut with the cougar will be sewn via embroidery to my fabric, and I don't have to worry about doing it manually on a sewing machine. Embroidery is the absolute greatest, and nothing beats the combination of SCAL, cougar and brother machine!

I hope this is encouragement to others that it is very possible to really enjoy plotter cutting of fabric for specific tasks. There's no question that for basic shapes like squares, strips, etc., cutting is best left to traditional methods. But for unique or hard to cut stuff (like circles), a plotter is a great thing. I was stymied for a long time because I found blanket stitching on the sewing side very difficult for me to pull off. No longer a problem with embroidery!

Pat

Re: happiness is.............

PostPosted: November 29th, 2016, 5:39 pm
by Gigi
Great to hear Pat!