American Crafts Cutting Mats
 

Is anyone familiar with this brand of cutting mat? It's called "Cut It Up" by American Crafts and the package says it's self healing. Saw them at Tuesday Morning.

I bought a couple at TM. They were okay but they didn't last as long as my Olfa.

I am convinced the "self-healing" designation on cutting mats created after Olfa (the original) had been on the market a while, merely means that the mat doesn't cut through like, maybe, cardboard would. In my quilting/teaching experience (34+ years) none of the other brands are made of the same substance Olfa is, and all of them seem to dull your cutting blade faster than the Olfa mat does. When I am paying $3 and up for blades, I do not want to worry that my mat is making the replacement more necessary; I would rather pay more up front for quality, than pay a little less more often for replacements. I have had Olfa mats for years and years and can still use them. I store my unused ones, or those going away from home to sewing events, like this graphic below and never have warping problems.

Jan in VA

Jan, thank you for the graphics on a storage solution for the mats! I kept mine under the couch so my cats couldn’t sharpen their claws on it, but didn’t care for the dust & loose fur it collected. I’m sure those weren’t good for it.

That's a good idea, Jan! Thanks!

I like my Olfa mats. I store them flat on my sewing table. I have used my 24 X36 mat for many years. It is due to be replaced but I keep using it. I do use the lines for measuring and have never had a problem with accuracy. I had had another brand of mat (smaller) to use in the camper. However, it just wasn't satisfactory and I replaced it with Olfa. I like Jan's idea for storage- but flat also works.

As always Jan, you are on point, both with your assessment of Olfa mats and with idea for storage.

Really the hard surface mats keeps the blades sharper longer. You aren't cutting into the mat. The industry where I use to work cut many gaskets and only hard surface mats were used. The blades for that cutting were too expensive to use the self healing mats. I wish I had saved many of the mat pieces that were cut to size, some discarded pieces were over four feet square. I wasn't quilting then. The mats came on flat bed trucks laying flat. Every guy had his workshop tables at home covered in them. LOL

I agree with Jan's assessment of Olfa mats. They were the first I ever used almost 40 years ago, and even though I have used others periodically, in my opinion you can't beat Olfa products. I really like what she said about paying a bit more for quality now rather than continually replacing blades and mat consistently. If you order online from WalMart you can get a better price than the fabric shops most of the time and it's the same product.

So true! Those hard mats are great. I found a cute decorative chair mat, and brought it home for under my chair. But it is made of the same hard material - heavy vinyl, or polycarbonite or something. It works great as a cutting mat! It's a weird size: 29x41, and has no grid. Also has no spikes on the bottom... just some sort of non skid surface.
I've had it for years.
Best of all, it doesn't leave slice marks behind or dull my blades.