of a Fiskars Donna Dewberry Collection Cutting Mat? I bought this thing at Joann's yesterday for half price. I had it in my kitchen to use for my "Kitchen Stitchin'". It is 18"x24" and it just plain stinks. Has the whole kitchen smelling of whatever it is made of. I find it very offensive to my olfactory nerves. Any suggestions?

Many have said you just have to air them out until the smell goes away :(

I got a stinky one once and just took it back and got a different one. That said, maybe you could put in a trash bag with baking soda or something to absorb the odors?

If it is wipe-able maybe a swipe of a solution of vinegar and water. As above I would air it outside for awhile if possible.

Thanks for the ideas. I may try the vinegar & water thing and then airing it out. But it is below freezing here; do you think that will hurt it?

Okay folks, I rinsed it off with vinegar & water and let it set a bit; then I put it outside in the sun, it is only about 30 degrees out. Now when I walk into my kitchen I can smell the stinky vinyl smell AND VINEGAR!!!! :roll: :-( :thumbdown:

LOL which is worse? Spray it with Febreeze or Oust, they work on everything else!

Just put a pan of collards on the stove, you won't smell the mat anymore.

I had this happen with the Olfa mat I purchased at Joann's once. I can completly relate to your problem, mine smelled darn close to ...Skunk! I saw the Olfa rep at a International quilt show and asked him point blank about the smell and how to get rid of it. He told me to soak it in the tub with vinegar, well it helped a little. What helped to most was leaving it in the garage for the winter. Yeah the garage smelled for awhile , but I could not bring myself to throw out what was an expensive purchase.
I think that the placed that sell alot of mats , they do not have time to breathe and have the smell go away. In hind sight as I was driving home from purchasing mine , I thought I had come across a receint road kill skunck because my car smelled.

Return it! Get a new brand. 8-)

Thanks, good idea! I have never eaten collards, but maybe I will now. I am so sensitive to smells. I would take it back but then I won't have a large cutting mat for upstairs. The ones I have in the basement are the large ones Joann sells, the white ones; don't remember them ever smelling. I will have to set it up out in the yard and cut out there till the smell goes. Last night when I came home from dinner I was checking all the shoes in the kitchen for you know what. Then I finally figured out that it was the mat.

I was going to get an Olfa but they were $5 more. Remember, I am supposed to be on a spending diet. And now that I had to replace the garbage disposal, I am even thinner in the wallet. Now I have another name to add to my do not purchase list; Donna Dewberry in addition to Fons & Porter.

Get some old-fashioned clay cat litter - not the clumping kind - the cheapest bag in the aisle. Put the mat in a garbage bag with a liberal amount of the litter. That clay absorbs almost anything. Everything I have used this method on has come out without a smell.

Darren

I bought a june taylor cut n press and it reeked. But the smell did go away. Just kinda let it air out and do its thing.

Any brand of mat can have this awful smell... apparently they all get better with time, but EWWWWW!

I had the same thing happen to me with a mat I, too, bought at JoAnn's. I never smelled it till I got home and opened the trunk! Wheeeew......it stunk up my sewing room for weeks till it finally aired out. The plastic wasn't cured properly. So everyone....smell your cutting mat before you buy it.

I have the same problem with "smell sensitivities" and I had a very difficult time finding a mat I could live with. Finally, I found one at Wal Mart called Quilting Mate by June Tailor. It is not self-healing, but it is working very well for me.

TAKE IT BACK TO THE STORE (LET THEM SMELL IT) AND GET AN EXCHANGE.

Try cinnamon in a bag along with the offending mat. Hope it works.

What am I going to exchange it for? Another stinky one? I think it is caused by whatever makes it self-healing because my plastic Joann ones never did that and they are the big 34"x 60" ones. The other brands were more expensive and probably smelled too. Next time I will use my nose when considering a purchase, not just my eyes and fingers. Today it may not be quite so bad; or that I am getting used to the stinky kitchen. I need to use it today. Don't have time for all the great ideas you all have given me.

Will that help get the musty smell out of my featherweight carrying case?

I agree with wesing. Cat litter will do the trick.

Set out a small bowl of vinegar on your kitchen cabinet. This will help with the odor in the room.

If it is good & cold out there, I would definately put it outside to freeze. As long as you have a very nice level place to lay it.

I don't happen to be any fonder of the vinegar smell than I am the mat smell. I washed down the mat with a vinegar solution yesterday and the kitchen still smells of vinegar. I think I will put some spices in a pot of simmering water on the stove to see if that will help. At this point I figure if I drink enough wine I won't CARE what the kitchen smells like :roll: :lol: :roll: :lol:

Bought an 24 X 36 Dritz at Joann's last yr. No smell.

Be aware of Gift Bags too!

Couple yrs. ago bought large gift bags at Dollar Store for Christmas quilts made for my granddaughters. Opened the closet door that had the bagged quilts in them, and just about passed out from the smell. Just overnight, it took me a week to air out those quilts. Think they must have had some type of painted coating on the bags. Made in China. Just be aware, if you have anything gifted in this type of bags! :thumbdown:

A while back I was at Joanns and I was looking around and was near a lady I did not know. I had to leave the area because she SMELLED like a skunk! Twice more I had to leave the area when she came near. I was flabbergasted and decided to go home. At the check out the clerk said, "Don't these mats stink?" MAT? I had been carrying the stick with me all that time! DUH! Thank heavens I didn't say anything to that woman who must have thought I was Stinky -- and I was--at least my mat was.

A few years ago, we moved into a new house. Our big freezer which our neighbor stored birds in after he went hunting, I clean and closed up for less than 24 hours. When we opened the freezer, it smelled horrible. We thought time would cure the problem and then I washed it out with baking soda, clorox, you name it and I probably tried it. My mother-in-law even told me she thought we were going to have to trash the freezer. Then I remembered a friend of mine who sold tupperware once told me that if your tupperware got a stinky smell to crumple newspaper in it and close it up. As a last effort to salvage the stinky freezer, I crumbled newspaper and placed in throughout the freezer...much to everyone's amazement, the smell was gone, never to return! So my suggestion is put it in a garbage bag with crumpled newspaper and see what happens. Now we and all our friends use crumpled newspaper to removed odors from everything...a lot of our friends love it for removing odors from their ice chests.

Well, I am glad to know I am not the only one finding these things stinky. I am almost finished with my Christmas sewing so I will then put it out in the garage and hope it doesn't stink up my truck.

YES! I purchased a mat for my daugter on Friday and as she was bagging it the lady said -- don't leave it in your car - it may break if you bend it at all (freezing).

Self-healing mats and non-healing mats are made from different materials. They all outgas differently and at different temperatures. Self-healing mats outgas a lot when they are newly manufactured. Some brands are worse than others. I have found that the harder the mat is, the less outgassing. The downside is they kill your rotary blades really fast. There really isn't a magic cure except time and maybe optimum conditions.

collards - haaaaaaaa hhhaaaaaaa - you go girl!!! glad they don't taste like they smell

By the way, a little off topic, what about a new hower curtain liner -- Whew -- I hand those in the garage (separate form the house) for a week before we can stand it.

I vote for Oust! Once had a solid waste accident that I had to clean out of carpet, saturated the area with Oust after cleaning the solid matter and never had even the slightest lingering hint.

Great stuff.

Hysterical! :P

I once broiled salted cod fish during the summer. Had all the flies in the neighborhood banging on the screens and neighbors wondering what had died. I pleaded ignorance!

i would return it and get another one , smell it before you buy it

That's hilarious! Thanks for posting it. I needed a good laugh.

Thanks everyone for all the great tips. It doesn't smell quite as funky as it did, but I can still smell the vinegar in the kitchen. I am going shopping today; may buy some collards. In the meantime I am going to put on a pot of pickling spices or just some cloves & cinnamon to "freshen" up the kitchen. My moral to this is to always remember to smell your purchases before buying. The people around you may look at you funny, if so just tell them you are checking for BO, or MO (mat odor).

If you have a bag of charcoal, you could open it up and put it in the center of your kitchen, the charcoal should remove the odor. Not sure about the mat odor though.

STOP and think, that smell is telling you it is ofgassing some of its chemical compounds, I'd isolate it, or return it.:)