Fabric & Hair Spray

Hair spray does work! I used a very old bottle of non-aerosol hair spray that's been sitting around unused for more than a year now (I just haven't gotten around throwing it away, LOL). I experimented on 2 kinds of fabric, light (cotton) and heavy (like tweed). Both cut perfectly as you'll see in the photos. The design cut from the brown light cotton is about 5 1/2" x 5 1/2" and the one from the grey heavy tweed is 1 1/2" x 1 1/2". Both cut perfectly! I cut these with my CB09 using the 45 degrees blade. As you'll see from the scrap of the grey tweed, the fabric frayed a lot but there was no fraying after the hair spray was applied and cut. The only thing with the use of spray is that It took longer than 30 seconds to dry the saturated fabric in the microwave oven, about a minute.

I also read someone using Elmer's glue and water, equal parts ratio (1-1), and put the solution in a spray bottle.I suppose the starch spray used for ironing clothes should work, too :).

http://ligayatg.blogspot.com/2011/02/cutting-fabric-with-silhouette-machine.html

Cutting Fabric With The Silhouette Machine

There has been a lot of talk about cutting fabric with the Silhouette machine in the Silhouette users Yahoo group these last couple of weeks. Silhouette just came out with a brand new product called Silhouette Interfacing which is a backing sheet that you apply to the wrong side of the fabric to make it stiff so it can lay flat and stick to the cutting mat. But someone in the group discovered the product Stiffen Stuff which she applied on the fabric and cut a flower design. Look how clean the cut is! She dried the fabric saturated with Stiffen Stuff in the microwave for about 30 seconds and it practically turned into a paper material when it dried. I also read that you can use the  blow dryer to dry the fabric but it takes much longer. The photo below was taken and posted by Jane.on the Silhouette Users Yahoo Group.

Here is another post regarding the Stiffen Stuff: http://howaboutorange.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-to-stiffen-fabric.html