Well – I finally opened the box of my new Cricut Maker.
So exciting!
But I’ll be honest – we got off to a bit of a rocky start.
The Design Space app didn’t install automatically and the link to click to continue the installation was a dead end to a nonexistent page. Not a huge deal – I know how to find my files and install them myself, but it’s the kind of thing that really frustrates a person who’s not super comfortable with technology so I thought it was worth mentioning.
They include some materials for your first project (a card) which is great. It let me walk through all the steps of making (not designing) and actual thing.
Designing was TRICKY. That’s going to take some practice – but I managed to get my first project (those bears in the hills) all set up and ready to go.
Time to cut some felt!
Uh oh. That does NOT look good.
I cut it on the felt setting and this was actually the second try with increased pressure. The first try just roughed up the surface of the felt without actually cutting anything.
I decided to lie to the machine and tell it I was cutting heavy fabric like denim. That prompted me to change it to the teeny tiny rotary blade instead of the knife blade.
Much better!
Look how clean the cuts are! And see the eye markings? The machine did that too with the pen attachment. So handy!
After I got the settings figured out I was on a roll. π
I cut all the pieces for my new Bears in the Hills in about an hour – while I was cleaning my studio. π
Next week I’ll have a video showing you how to layer all these guys up and prep for stitching.
I can’t wait to try the Cricut on regular fabric for applique quilt blocks – that’ll be my next project with the machine.
Happy stitching!