The Beespoke Buzz

I thought I'd treat you today to a sampling of one of my Patreon Posts - my weekly "Tool Tuesday" musings.

I’ve probably talked about this a lot, but you know I am a self-taught seamstress. Well, my grandmother got me started at a very, very early age hand-sewing, but after about nine years old I was on my own to keep sewing and to try to learn what I could through trial and error. Remember, I grew up in the pre-internet era so if I wanted to learn something I had to get myself to a local library and pull down books (I still remember the number for sewing and costuming - 646!)

Anyway . . . this is a long story to get to the point and that is when you’re self-taught you often skip over or miss some fundamentals. And that’s what I’d call the rotary cutter – A FUNDAMENTAL!

Okay, I’ll attest to the fact that maybe when I was growing up rotary cutters weren’t in popular use so that might also be a reason I never learned to use one or even really knew they existed. A quilting friend of mine gifted me a rotary cutter probably 10 years ago and I just looked at it and thought what am I supposed to do with this?! (I wasn’t connecting the fact that I would also need a HUGE self-healing mat to go under it, so it seemed kind of useless to me as a seamstress).

I can’t even tell you why one day I decided to splurge on a couple of 36 x 24 mats, but I did! (Probably a really good sale going on at JoAnns or a Christmas deal on Amazon) And it was no turning back after that!

I mean, let’s face it:

You don’t have to pin! (Hellooooo . . . I HATE pinning and I almost never do it!)
You don’t have to lift the fabric up to cut it, which can cause it to move around or even to distort your edges if you’re not careful.
It’s FAST!

I was sold. I love using a rotary cutter and it’s yet another tool I wish I had known about ages ago. I discovered that I could butt up two 36 x 24 mats on my kitchen table and they fit perfectly and prevented me from having to cut out on the floor, which is another huge plus! Eventually I built myself a cutting table (I’ll share that one in a future post) and bought a big 36” x 48” mat and that’s been my go-to. Absolute heaven!

Now, I will say there are a few drawbacks:

You need to buy the mats and sometimes they can be expensive (unless you have an old table you don’t mind cutting into but I’d think eventually that’s going to splinter and could damage your fabric.
You’ll want some pattern weights (I’ll share my favorites in a future post) but you really can use anything heavy you have lying around – canned food, your cell phone, a shoe . . . 😊
The blades wear down pretty quickly and they can be expensive to replace. Keep your eye out for sales and snap them up when you can.
You need to be especially careful around curves or you can move the blade too quickly and cut where you don’t want to - especially a convex curve where you might slip and cut into your pattern/fabric.
Internal corners you’ll still need scissors to get a precise, sharp angle.