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Saturday, January 1, 2011

Introduction & my first project post

Hi All!

I'm a mother of 2 boys, one just turned 5 the other is not quite 2. Life is busy for me but one of my new years resolutions is to set aside more time for myself for art. Whether it be scrapbooking, card making, painting, jewelrymaking - the list goes on. I plan on using this blog to post pictures of my projects and share links to free cut files I make on my gypsy, design studio and also Make the Cut.

So to hit the ground running, I finally attempted to cut fabric with my cricut. It didn't go exactly smoothly, but I was expecting that given all the comments I'd read. I cut out fabric applique letters to adhere to a little apron that I picked up at Hobby Lobby. My son had long ago picked up a premade train applique and wanted it, so I'm finally using that too. Thankfully he is still very much in to trains!

Anyhow - on to the details of the project I used my gypsy to design the cuts, but an expression is all you would need to cut this. I ironed SteamASeam2 onto the back of my fabric and then stuck it to my mat fabric faced DOWN. I reversed the letters in gypsy (but you could use the mirror function on the expression machine to do the same). For whatever reason the gypsy decided to cut out the letters at lightening speed. I think that contributed to the issues. I had my blade depth set at 6 and my pressure to max. It mostly cut the letters but I did have to go back with a pair of scissors and snip at certain points where the blade skipped over the material. I had to redo one H completely because the fabric shifted under the blade and one 'leg' of the letter didn't cut correctly.

All in all I'm happy with the results (though my applique sewing techniques could use some practice!).

I'm going to fiddle with settings and materials to see if it makes a difference. I think slower speed with less pressure might have given better results. I've seen posts where people used wonderunder with success so I might try that too.