Sunday 28 June 2015

Sunday Stash #15

Still no new fabric (I feel like I'm on a diet - shudder!) but some new notions appeared this week including this from Massdrop.



It's a circle cutter that acts a little like your school protractor used to - there's a graduated slide a pivot point at one end and a moveable small rotary cutter at the other end. I haven't used it yet but understand that you slide the little knob along the arm until you reach the desired radius for your circle and then screw it on to secure the cutter at that length. You then place the pivot point in the centre of your fabric and spin the arm around, cutting using the rotary cutter on the end of the arm.

Although I have a couple of other tools for cutting circles, this one appealed to me because of the flexibility in radius of circles you can cut.

I have an EZ Quilting shape cut circle ruler and small rotary cutter which work well but they only cut circles which have a diameter which is a whole number of inches - the smallest is 2", the largest 10" I think.


 If you want to cut anything with a diameter different to those measurements, you can't use this ruler to do it. In addition, although Simplicity state that any small rotary cutter works with the ruler, it isn't true. For certain diameters, the smaller rotary cutter is still too big to fit in the groove. And whilst the Ez Quilting rotary cutter does work with all diameters, even it requires a couple of passes to cut cleanly. I suspect I need to change my blade but Simplicity don't make it clear whether you can use a standard small rotary blade in the cutter or whether you have to buy their specialist blades. As the cutter has now been discontinued, I might be stuck if that's the case.

I also have the Olfa circular rotary cutter. 

Unlike the one they seem to sell in the U.S., the UK version doesn't have a rotary cutting blade at the end but instead just had a raw unprotected craft blade. For someone whose is as clumsy as me, this presents risks. You can cut circles of different diameters with this cutter and aren't limited to the whole inches as you are with the EZ Quilting ruler; just slide the blade up and down the slide and screw in to secure. However although the slide has a little scale marked on it, there aren't any number to indicate exactly what radius or diameter of circle these correspond to. I find you have to pick a point on the scale, secure the blade at that point and then measure the distance you've just set on your rotary mat to work out what circle you would get if you used the cutter as you've set it up. There's a fair amount of trial and error involved with setting it up. There's also a fair amount of trial and error involved in cutting - hold the cutter too firmly, press down too much or "saw away" (ie repeatedly cut the same point) and you won't get a clean cut. I eventually found that you have to hold the cutter at the top most point of the handle and just go for it. Not ideal.

I'm hoping that the new tool will combine the best bits of all the above. Let's hope it doesn't combine the worst features as well!

7 comments:

  1. Those look like some interesting notions! I love circles, they are such a break from the traditional squares in quilting :)

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    1. I agree. Curves are still scary though!

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  2. I have only seen the ruler for cutting circles. The other cutters are very interesting! I love seeing new gadgets and toys! Thanks for sharing!

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    1. If you're planning on cutting lots of circles, I'd definitely go for one of the cutters rather than the ruler. It's a bit inflexible

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  3. Hope you write about how the new one works later. I have the middle one you show. I'd be in the market for something better.

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    1. I'll try to remember to post a blog once I've tested it out.

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  4. This is a fantastic roundup of the different cutters available. I've stayed clear of them because I wasn't sure how well they worked, I think a review of the Massdrop one when you use it would be invaluable!

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