Has anyone ever tried cutting fabric?

I am dabbling with cutting fabric (cotton tee shirt) and making appliques – I did a search on cutting fabric (before someone says ‘use the search’) and there is painfully not a lot, I know trial and error is the key, I am gonna try with a paper setting and see what happens, I have a cool idea.

Jonathan

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There are examples of fabric and the Glowforge, but t shirts are knit fabric which is different from denim and quilt fabric which is woven. I believe, however, that @Dan used the Glowforge to cut t shirt material for masks early on in the pandemic.

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Settings are easy to figure out.

#6:

And yes use search :slight_smile: not sure what you saw or didn’t, but I’d recommend searching for the actual fabric. Like “denim” etc.

There are also people who are quilters on here, you might search for “quilt” and “appliqué”.

Someone did some awesome fabric backed Sakura flowers.

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RULE #1: *if it catches on fire, LESS POWER ON LASER. *

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Hmm oops that was done with origami paper.

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Huh I searched just “fabric” and got 50+ results.

Search here can be annoyingly specific. Discourse doesn’t handle typos and doesn’t always return what you think it might.

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@evansd2 strange, I got a few posts one good suggestion about using a stickymat, and a few posts about silk. – that’s it… Lemme boolean again…

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This Link: was invalid for me…

:frowning:

Jonathan

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My bad. We can’t discuss setting anywhere but Beyond the Manual. I am sending you a pm.

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My friend, you would be amazed at the data that has accrued here over 6 years, the search function is a goldmine!

This^^ is key. The data is robust, but there is so much that digging it up can prompt you to just ask a question…

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I do a reasonable amount of engraving and scoring on canvas. I use 1000/40/125 and it looks great. It’s pretty good quality canvas…

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Just checked on my cotton settings. I use bonding to a flat piece of material, put it in the GF and cut out appliques. I us 350/full with 1 pass and it cuts great for me (although I’m sure it could be dialed down a lot and still cut through easily). Then, with having the bonding already on there, you just iron it on…no fraying with this method.

For the canvas ‘cut’ i use 200/60.

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True. Also people use different terms to describe things.

I have found the key to working with fabric is to use interfacing, which when I search on the forum the hits are all about the glowforge interface as opposed to the fabric iron on interfacing I was searching for. I notice people use terms like “bonding” or “stabilizer”. Bonding fabric is what is probably the term used most when talking about interfacing because bonded fabrics are commonly used for interfacing. So if I had searched for fabric bonding then I would find lots of hits that are along the line of what I was looking for. Neither term is wrong, just people have a different terms they think of to search.

Stabilizers do not remain with the fabric and so I have not had luck with them.

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I learn something new every day:

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Yup. Too many men didn’t get to take home ec in high school in the 60’s and before to learn about such wonders of the world.

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I took home ec and liked it, I remember making a beanbag chair, good times. I just don’t know that I ever got technical enough to know about interfacing. :slight_smile:

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Lol never did home ec but I do a lot of fashion sewing and interfacing is key to necklines and making things like a button up shirts collars. It stays with the fabric and is why when I engrave on denim, I don’t have an issue with the fabric falling apart even after washing it and trying to actually get it to tear apart.

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What, no Simplicity Patterns for you? Interfacing for collars and lapels. Also for plackets and cuffs and…oh yeah, and when you have the interfacing laying the wrong way up it makes a pretty big mess on the iron. A mistake generally only made once.

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Never been good at following those types of pattern templates and they don’t really have ones that line up with my typical makes. For example, what I made last weekend:

Also, Teflon sheets are helpful to protect your iron in cases where the interfacing doesn’t require the steam process.

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This is beautiful!

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