Rotary Blade Tip!

Last year, or maybe even the year before, I wrote a post about how to temporarily sharpen your rotary blade. Its on my old blog. Today I noticed a huge increase in traffic to that post so I thought it was worthy of republishing it here. Remember it's only meant as a temporary fix until you can get your blade properly re-sharpened or you buy a new one. (And... if you are looking for a replacement blade you can one here : replacement blade for 45mm rotary cutter , and even if your not in the market for a new blade it's still worth popping over to look at this link because there is a video by Olfa that shows you how to replace your blade!)

Happy Quilting!

So lets paint a picture .... you have had a great day sewing and everything has been going well ... your on a roll and looking forward to getting your project finished. Just a few more blocks to make and you'll be 'cooking with gas' ...or maybe not. Your rotary blade is beginning to get a bit dull and you find your fabric strips are not cutting cleanly. The top fabric layer might be ok but your having to do a double cut to avoid those tiny pesky litte tie-threads between the lower fabric strips. You really need a new blade but you haven't got one to hand .... aargh!

Don't panic ... do you have a roll of kitchen foil on hand? If you do then this tip will help tide you over until you can go shopping for a new blade.

Take a sheet of kitchen foil, place it on your cutting board and then chop away with your rotary blade .... chop , chop,chop ,chop chop. The action of cutting through the foil will help sharpen up the blade just enough to help alleviate the pesky threads problem. Its not an alternative to getting a new blade I'm afraid but it is a temporary fix!

So todays tip is:

rotary cut a sheet of kitchen foil into small bits to put a temporary edge on your rotary blade