How to Clean a Self Healing Cutting Mat

Today I wanted to share a great tip I found on the Olfa cutting site on keeping your self healing cutting mat clean and in good working order. 

When you cut lots of fabric or particularly fuzzy materials you may start to notice a fuzzy residue left behind on your mat. These fibers can get in the mat and affect your quality of cutting. To clean it use an art gum eraser to remove the fibers. The erasers can be found at craft or art supply stores and they really work! Here is a before picture of my cutting mat the white lines are embedded fibers. I even tried scrubbing it with a microfiber cloth first before using the gum eraser.

As you can see I've been using my mat quite a while. When I'm not cutting I sometimes use it on my desk to just protect my work surface hence the dab of red paint on it! Here is the eraser and the same area after I went over it.

Success! The eraser feels a bit tacky but it doesn’t leave behind any residue or eraser bits like a pencil eraser. If you look closely in the picture you can see where the bits actually stick to the eraser. Just wipe it off and continue working until you have gone over the whole mat. I will say my hand was a bit cramped by the time I was done but it was so worth it. I've had this mat about eight years and I thought I was finally going to have to replace it but after scrubbing it with the eraser I'm getting nice clean cuts again. No more taking two and three passes with my rotary cutter!

A big Thank you to Olfa for the tips and I hope you enjoyed my before and after pictures to show it really does work! 

Equilateral Triangle Quilt Part 1-Cutting

A few months back I kept seeing equilateral triangle quilts on Pinterest. I loved them! Especially those made from solid fabrics. I usually gravitate toward cute prints, but the bright, simplicity, of some of these made me want to try something different. I have already chosen my fabrics, 6 in all- turquoise, pomegranate, grey, charcoal, pumpkin, and lime; all cut into 5 1/2" strips. Now the fun part cutting the triangles!

This is so easy to do you just use the marking on your quilting ruler and your rotary cutter. I want equilateral triangles so I find the 60 degree mark and line it up along the bottom of my fabric strip:

Now cut along the long side of the ruler.

Now rotate the ruler to the other 60 degree mark, line it up along the bottom of the fabric while simultaneously aligning the long edge of the ruler to the top of the now formed triangle.

Cut

Tada! Easy peasy triangles. Now just keep rotating your ruler lining up the 60 degree mark and continue cutting out triangles until you have the desired number. To make this faster you can cut multiple layers at once. Up next:  Part 2-Layout