Soaked cutting mat
 

I just got home from a 10 day visit with my daughter. We spent nearly all our time quilting and knitting. Her cutting mat felt dried out and brittle. We tried soaking it in the bathtub then letting it dry and were really impressed with the results. Now that I'm home I can't wait to soak both of mine.

So cool, I still have to do mine!!!

What was the water temp that you used? I have an old mat and it could use some help. Did you just let it lay flat to dry or did you weight it down?

Here is the suggestion from an Olfa customer on how she clean her mat.

http://olfacutterstore.com/tips-tricks-customers.htm

Good info to have. Never thought of soaking/cleaning mine. thanks.

After reading a thread about soaking/cleaning your cutting mat here on another thread, I filled my tub with a few inches of warm water, added some vinegar and let the mat soak for about ten minutes. Then I used a vegetable brush to scrub it gently, rinsed it and dried it with a big towel. I am amazed at how it has perked that old mat up! :)

thanks for the link... good to know

going to try this! Thanks for the info.

What if your tub isn't big enough? Do you press it flat with something or do you just let it lay there?

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!!

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

Great idea. Thanks for Sharing

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

Thank you for sharing this info....I need to soak mine pretty soon!!

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.

Last fall I bought a Bebe mat at the Quilt Show. The salesperson had never heard of soaking the mat to reinvigor it. She assured me my mat would last a long time. Well needless to say my mat has so many cut grooves I can't use it. I'm going to try the soaking but I don't understand what the vinegar does.

fons & porter suggest you put some white vinegar in the water too. It makes it new agaain

if you use a pink eraser ,like the school ones they clean the mat also the big ones are faster to clean with. DottieBug