Thread: Soaked cutting mat

Thank you sew much for posting that link!Very informative!! I will be doing this to my cutting mat soon. Just need to get a baby quilt finished first!!

It DOES make a difference. My mat was not able to lay flat in the bathtub so I slid it up and down every so often so all of the surface was able to hydrate. I did not use the vinegar in the water and it turned out fine. Next time I will use the vinegar. I laid it flat on a towel to dry.

yep Olfa hands out info like that at quilt shows. so far, i've not soaked mine and i have had them for yrs and yrs.

I soaked mine (in just plain hot water, didn't know about the vinegar idea) a couple of days ago because both my mats were yucky. My mats are too big to lie flat in the tub, so I just let them curve, and swooshed them around every now and then, and scrubbed them with an old toothbrush (but I think the vegetable brush idea is better). I was trying to get upholstery fabric threads out of one mat, and school-glue-plus-fuzzies off the other. Both mats feel much better, though I couldn't get all of the upholstery fabric fibres out of the one. They did not stay curved after I removed them from the water, but they were still warm as I dried them with a towel and so at their maximum flexibility...

I use the markings on my mats to measure most of my cuts, so some of the grooves in them are never going to come out, but I did find that soaking them improved their texture markedly.

Alison

If you have more than one matt, could you stack them in the tub together?

I do so much cutting that I have worn grooves into my mats on
all sides. The only unmarred surface of the mats are about a 3-4"
section in the middle of the mats. I have 5 mats in this condition.

Not sure if this is going to be much help for me, but heck I am willing
to try anything I guess.

Thanks for the link.

Here is a tool to help clean our cutting mats from Nancy's Notions!

http://www.nancysnotions.com/product/mat+smoother.do?sortby=ourPicks

Here is a link to sharpening your rotary blades from N N.

http://www.nancysnotions.com/categor...de=NNOADV-1319

Good idea, I read this before and of course, forgotten it. I will try it this summer.