Originally Posted by bearisgray
Originally Posted by ChaiQuilter
Originally Posted by bearisgray
I've made my own templates.
If they have straight edges, I use my rotary cutter and ruler to cut them.
If they have curved edges, I cut them out with a scissors.
Don't have a template cutter, so can't offer any comments about them.
Do you use your rotary cutter with the templates you make? I find they are thin and dangerous to use with the rotary. Any advice would be appreciated!
I use my rotary cutter to cut around the templates - I usually manage to avoid cutting them. My technique is probably a bit different than when I'm cutting against a "regular" 1/8 thick acrylic ruler.
I don't quite get the "dangerous" part of cutting around a thin plastic template - other than to avoid slicing off part of it.
Okay - I got it! The difference is cutting AROUND as compared to cutting AGAINST!
Works for me, anyway.
I tried cutting the template plastic with x-acto knives. That didn't work out very well for me. Maybe I needed different blade(s) than the one I have.
You need to score with the xacto a couple of times and then just break the plastic on the score line. I ususally cut the template out with scissors, though. But that probably doesn't give you a perfectly straight line like using your acrylic ruler with the xacto.
I use one of the burning stencil tools to make the stencils for quilting motifs, but not for making templates for quilt block pieces.