Cutting Fabric with a Silhouette Cameo 4!
This is a test I’ve been wanting to do for a while! I’m so glad to finally be able to share with you what I have learned!
I tested 5 pieces of fabric with 3 different stabilizers:
Green Square: Cotton fabric with Light Stabilizer
Yellow Square: Cotton fabric with Medium weight Stabilizer
Blue Square: Cotton fabric with no stabilizer
Black Square: Poly Cotton Blend fabric with no stabilizer
Pink Square: Cotton fabric with Heat and Bond
I Trimmed each one to 2 inches by 2 inches and laid them on my mat (which is a new off brand mat because I cut through mine playing with faux leather recently lol)
In my Design Studio I placed 5 squares to test the Auto-blade on. The Auto-blade is a standard blade that can cut almost anything except thick materials. It’s mostly used to cut vinyl and paper, but today it will also be cutting fabric!
I placed 5 blue circles to test the Rotary Blade on. This blade specializes in cutting fabric with its round blade and goes in the 2nd carriage slot of the Cameo, which has extra power in its engine compared to the first carriage slot.
From the send panel I can tell the machine that I need it to cut everything in red with the auto-blade and everything in blue with the rotary blade. I can even tell each blade how much pressure to use and how fast to go.
You will notice with the Rotary blade there are small squiggles on the mat. These are turn around spots. A round blade can’t make the precision cuts a flat one can, in one go. It needs to lift up and turn itself around, sometimes using a small spot on the mat to do that.
You can also see on the send panel where to chose the second slot blade and even check each color on/off next to that panel.
Let’s press the Send button and see what we get 😃
All done! Let’s see one by one how they turned out.
First up is Blue Cotton Square with no stabilizers.
You can see the square imprint the auto blade made, but it wasn’t enough to cut all the way through. I could test the blade settings and see if I just need to lower the blade more, or increase the pressure (force).
The rotary blade went all the way through on the first cut, not bad!
Next up is Black Poly Blend Square with no stabilizer.
Stating that it’s a blend of polyester and cotton is important because it makes this fabric stiff, even after you wash it. Almost like you sprayed starch on it, but you didn’t.
As you can see that came in handy here! Both blades cut through it easily.
Green Cotton Square with Lightweight stabilizer.
Stabilizer gives body to fabric without having to add more layers of fabric. It has an adhesive on one side for you to iron it to the project which allows it to stay in place while you are sewing.
Though it now has a similar feel to the Black stiff Poly Blend… it is also thicker than the black square. Meaning we need to lower the blade more and add more pressure if we want this to work.
With that said, Yellow Square with Medium weight stabilizer is even thicker than green, and only the rotary blade even scored the fabric.
Again. We can change the settings to make it work, but it would need its own test and trial.
That leaves us with Pink Cotton Square with Heat and Bond.
Heat and bond is similar to stabilizer but it’s double sided with adhesive and it’s purpose isn’t to give body to fabric but to turn any fabric into an iron on.
I’ve used this product for many years with out a cutting machine! (More info on Heat and Bond in the Appliqué Owl tutorial on next page)
Go to the next page on the bottom left and read “Appliqué Owl Pillow” to see what I did with this information!
If you make this project please tag me!
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