All Silhouette models can cut fabric when using the fabric interfacing product. This product is ironed on to your fabric and then the fabric with the interfacing is placed onto a cutting mat with the interfacing side down (fabric side facing up). Depending on the fabric, you may want to double-cut your design.
With the Rotary Blade, you can cut fabric materials like cotton fabric, felt, leather, and more. The Kraft Blade for Cameo 4 can cut materials like acetate, craft foam, and burlap.
Silhouette Studio Designer Edition Plus or higher will open embroidery files which means you can cut fabric applique with your Silhouette then finish the machine embroidery applique on your embroidery machine!
Silhouette Rotary Blade is for use in the Cameo 4 only. The Rotary blade provide an alternate method of cutting by having the blade roll across your material. Cut a variety of specialty materials including cotton fabrics, leather, felt, wool, and more without a special stabilizer backing.
The Silhouette machine can cut:
- Paper.
- Cardstock.
- Adhesive Vinyl.
- Heat Transfer Material.
- Specialty Media like tattoo paper, magnet paper, wood paper, vellum, transparencies.
- Fabric.
- Felt.
- Faux Leather.
Make sure you are using a Silhouette fabric blade to get the best fabric cut with the Silhouette machine. From the Cut Settings window in Silhouette Studio select "Fabric - Thin Like Cotton" from the material list and adjust the blade settings according to the recommend cut settings. Send the design to cut.
The standard black Silhouette Ratchet Blade can be used to cut a splice in any of the CAMEO machines, the Portrait and the Curio. With the exception of fabric, the ratchet blade is used to cut all materials, ranging from paper to vinyl to stencil material, etc in the CAMEO and Portrait.
The Silhouette is a great paper cutting machine. It's not the best for cutting chipboard. It can do it but you need to use a thin chipboard… Step 1: Cut your cereal box down (skip this if you've got thin chipboard, no need to cut it down).
I get asked a lot if it's possible to cut acrylic with Silhouette CAMEOthe short answer is no. Shrinky Dinks come as thin sheets so they can be cut with Silhouette CAMEO or Portrait, but once they're baked quickly in the oven, they harden and expand to about 9x their original thickness.
Do's and Don'ts:
- DO: Test cut to find the best deep-cut blade settings for each material.
- DO: Use the deep-cut blade with the Silhouette Curio™.
- DO: Use a double cut for denser materials if one pass doesn't quite cut all the way through.
- DON'T: Cut really dense materials.
- DON'T: Cut any material thicker than 2 mm.
With the new Silhouette CAMEO 4 Rotary Blade you can cut felt without a liner.
Cut it! My Silhouette had no trouble at all with the veneer, but you might have to experiment with blade depth and double cutting.
It's now easier than ever to cut felt with Silhouette CAMEO. The trick is to use the CAMEO 4 rotary blade - and you can skip the stabilizer. The rotary blade rolls across the felt rather than dragging the blade through it, which allows both acrylic craft felt and wool felt to cut very easily.
Below are some materials that the Silhouette Portrait can cut:
- Paper/Cardstock up to 350 gsm thick.
- Tissue paper.
- Vinyl.
- Iron-on transfer.
- Cereal box chipboard.
- Craft foam.
- Light weight fabric.
- Rhinestone template material.
If you want to just open and cut files, Cricut software seems easier to use. If you'd like to design your own files, Silhouette software has more designing options. If you're buying images from Silhouette's program, you'll be able to keep them even after cancellation from Silhouette's design store.
Silhouette Portrait® 2 SpecificationsThe Silhouette Portrait® 2 is a powerful DIY machine. It plugs into your PC or Mac® with a simple USB cable and uses a small blade to cut over 100 materials, including paper, cardstock, vinyl, and fabric up to 8 inches wide and 10 feet long.
I found that Lambskin or 1 or 2 oz non-bonded leather can be cut with a Silhouette CAMEO. The thickness and softness of the leather are crucial to your success of cutting it. A thick media cutting mat would be a good idea for cutting leather.
The Silhouette CAMEO 3The Silhouette CAMEO is the ultimate DIY machine. It uses a small blade to cut over 100 materials, including paper, cardstock, vinyl, and fabric up to 12 inch wide. The CAMEO has the ability to register and cut printed materials and is PixScan compatible.
No special mats either, just use your original Silhouette mat. It will engrave or etch on pretty much anything you would normally cut! The tip is made of a very hard carbide. Works best on metal sheets, Core'dinations cardstock, acrylic, plastic sheets, vellum, and some metal surfaces.
With the Silhouette you can cut a wide variety of products: paper and card stock, heat transfer material, adhesive vinyl, craft foam, vellum, and more. And the projects that come with that are endless.
The most common cause for the Silhouette CAMEO 3 not cutting or not cutting through is a problem with the blade - specifically the Autoblade. Press the blade completely down and then lock it into place by pressing the tab all the way in.
The cutting mat was not loaded properly. During the loading process, line up the mat with the small guide mark on the far left side of the machine (rather than loading it justified to the left against the blade adjustment receptacle). If you are using a Cameo, the right-hand pinch roller is not locked into place.
Here is what you want to do to get ready to cut:
- Remove the mat from the bag. Then gently peel back the paper from the mat.
- The mat is VERY sticky.
- Place the paper inside the grid guidelines.
- Use your palm or a Silhouette scraper tool to make sure the paper is stuck down to the mat evenly across the paper.
If your Silhouette Autoblade continues to cut through the vinyl, it's very likely due to the way the Autoblade is seated in the tool carriage. When the blade is not fully seated in the tool carriage - meaning there is a gap (even a small one) - it actually cuts too deep.
Abnormally loud noise coming from the Silhouette machine could likely be caused by the motor if the packing tape that was used to keep it in place during shipping was not properly or completely removed.
Remove the power cord connection that is hooked into the Silhouette With the power cord removed from the machine, hold down the power button on the side of the machine While continuing to hold down the power button, plug the power cord back into the machine Continue to hold down the power button until the screen turns
To adjust the blade setting, place the blade into the adjustment socket so the arrow on the socket lines up with the red line on the blade. A ratchet cap, which is included with each blade can be used also. 4. Turn the blade to the desired number.
