What fabric can the Cricut Maker cut?
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.
The Cricut Maker is different than any other cutting machine out there. With the adaptive tool system, you can cut so many different types of materials and fabric. The adaptive tool system consists of the rotary blade, knife blade and single/double scoring wheels. These look different than what the explore air 2 or older use. You can see how different they look in the picture below. The bottom row is: Premium fine point blade (gold), Premium fine point blade (silver) and the black deep cut blade (love this one!). The only difference between the first two is the housing color. This is helpful if you want to keep your blades organized. My gold one is for paper only. My silver one is for vinyl or any other project. I love being organized, even though I am a hot mess… at least I am trying right! The adaptive tool system allows the machine to not just go side to side, front to back, but now it can go up and down, which is crucial for rotary cutters. If you were to cut bonded fabric with a fine point blade, it is just dragging the blade through the fabric, the blade just follows the motion of the machine. If you didn’t have bonded fabric, it would bunch up right away. The rotary blade cuts, then lifts up when it needs to change to a different direction. Just like you would with a rotary cutter. This is my favorite tool in the system and I am going to show you why!
I went through my fabric stash and grabbed ten different types of fabric that I have not cut on the Maker yet. I have cut woven fabrics tons of times so I already know it can cut through that flawlessly. I choose a few that I was actually curious about. The super thick knit, I wasn’t sure if the little rotary blade would be able to handle all that fluff/ thickness. I heard it could cut sequins, but I just had to try it for myself. Cricut has a list of hundreds of types of fabrics that has already been tested. Here I am going to cut these 10 fabrics using the Rotary blade that is included with the Cricut Maker. I used the simple heart shape that is free to use in Design Space. Some of these fabrics already have presets in Design Space, some don’t so in my YouTube video I have a quick little section of the fabrics and settings. You can skip to 3:20 in the video to just see that.
The Maker did an excellent job at cutting every single one of these substrates.
I also show you how to change the rotary blade using the replacement kits that you can get on Cricut’s website. These blade replacement kits were so well thought out when designed. You never once have to touch the rotary blade, great for those that are worried about replacing a small blade like that. It’s actually kind of fun. One of the most common questions I get is how often you have to change the blade. Well, this depends on so much. How much you have used it and what you have used it on. Treat it the same as your regular rotary cutter. I am so horrible at changing blades, I used my first blade for a year!!!!!! but I only cut woven fabric and I stored my tool carefully when I was not using it. I will say, when I changed it, I realized I should have done that months ago. Today I just put my 3rd blade on (I know, I know….. I need to do it more often) and I was one of the lucky few that got a machine before they actually launched. And you probably have seen all the quilts and sewing projects I have made so the blades do last a long time. I am the same with my regular rotary cutter. When I change the blade I get so excited because it cuts so much better, you think I would learn, especially when I keep blades on hand….
Experimenting with fabrics is always fun. I plan on cutting more and more fabrics as time allows. If only we could craft and sew all day right! I hope you enjoyed this little post and inspire you to go cut fun fabrics on your Maker. I don’t think I could ever get tired of peeling that fabric off the mat. I still get giddy every time!
Happy Sewing!
Katie Skoog
