All About Rotary Cutters

A rotary cutter is something that cutturs use in pretty much every project that they make. And while a lot of times you may know that there are different sizes of rotary cutters, there's also different types of blades. So just real quick, I wanna talk about some of the different sizes in case you were not aware that there are different sizes of rotary cutter blades. But this is the standard rotary cutter size that we use for pretty much all of our videos here, I use pretty much a hundred percent of the time, and it is a 45 millimeter blade. There also is a 60 millimeter rotary cutter, and there are smaller 28 and 18 millimeter cutters.

They have different purposes depending on if you're trying to cut out really small, intricate curves, you would use a smaller rotary cutter, if you're cutting through multiple layers of a thick fabric. So maybe you are making a baby quilt, and you have flannel or fleece or something like that, and you're cutting through multiple layers of that, which are really, really thick, then you need sort of the extra height of the bigger blade. So just know that there are bigger blades available, bigger cutters available if you need them. Within each one of these sizes of rotary cutters, there's going to be different types of handles, different styles, and which one you pick is gonna depend on what works best for you. I always like to use this straight one here because it is one that you can actually use either right or left-handed.

So if you're right-handed, you're gonna expose the lower edge here and use it right-handed. If you're left-handed, you can still expose the lower edge and use it left-handed. Ones like these that have just sort of a handle that you're going to squeeze and use together, this is only a right-handed blade. If I was left-handed, there really isn't a way for me to put this side up against the ruler and use it. Now, this one specifically is one where if I was left-handed, I could take the blade off this side, flip everything around and put it on the left-hand side so I could use it as a left-hander, but this one is a little bit easier to be able to do that.

Also, there are ones that are sort of a combination of the two. So while this one, you have to pull down the lever to expose the blade, this one, you have to hold in the handle. This one has yet another feature where you actually just pull in a little trigger. This blade guard also actually doubles as a stamp. So if you want your rotary cutter to stand up to be easier to grab, this one doubles as that.

So there are so many different types and styles of rotary cutters. You're bound to be able to find one that's perfect for you and what you wanna use. Again, even within sort of another sub category here of our rotary cutters, there are all sorts of blades. And I don't mean just the size. Obviously there's different sizes of blades, but there's also different.

So this is just your standard rotary cutter blade. It cuts your fabric very nicely, but maybe you don't wanna cut it in a straight line. If you are looking at pre-cut fabrics and you see that pinked edge, and you're thinking I would like to replicate that on my fabric because I wanna use that so my edge doesn't ravel, or I wanna create that pinked edge and I don't wanna sit there with my pinking shears and cut all the way down, you can actually find pinking blades for your rotary cutters. So this here, if I open this one up, looks just like your standard rotary blade, but instead of being straight along the edge, be careful when I hold this up here, you can see that it is not straight, it actually is a very, very wavy edge. So it's going to create all of those little V shapes or all of those little teeth marks that you see on that pink edge of your pre cut fabric.

This rotary blade is going to create that. So this is what a pinking blade looks like. So you have a regular one, you have a pinking blade. Another option that you might find that you could use either as a way to keep the edges of your fabric from unraveling, or maybe you just wanna create a nice, decorative look, is a wave blade. So this one here is a much bigger V or a bigger wave to it.

So rather than creating that small little pinked edge like this one here is much larger and will create just a nice sort of subtle wave right along the edge. So both of these are 45 millimeter blades that can go in 45 millimeter cutters. One thing you might find you will need or may need with these blades is a spacer. So you can see with this cutter here, when I hold it up, you can't really see any gap or any distance between the blade and the guard, it's one right next to each other. So you can see the blade and the guard are right against each other.

Because of the shape of this wave or the pinked edge, you might need a little bit of a spacer to be able to use this blade with your cutter so that the outer edge or the whatever the curved most edge of that blade is at is what sits against your rotary cutter, and it's not pushed in there too hard. So you may need to either get the specialty blades that fit with your specific brand of rotary cutter or find some sort of universal spacer that works with all of them. Another additional way that you can find is one that's actually called a scoring blade. So this one isn't really even a blade at all. It does not have a sharp edge at all and is very, very dull.

But this is one where say you need to make a mark on your fabric for either a half square triangle or flying geese or something and you don't wanna draw that line, you can put this into your rotary cutter, run right along it, and it's going to create a little scoring line. So it might be hard to see it on the camera, but I can see it here is just a little tiny indentation, and that's what a scoring blade does. So think through your rotary cutter purchases and know that there are so many different sizes, so many different style options of cutters, of blades, of things that you can do with your rotary cutters and really sort of play around and have fun with them and add a few more cutters to your quilting room supply stash.