Cutting fabric with cricut explore air 2

When I first bought my Cricut last year I knew I wanted to use it for cutting things like fabric and felt but from all the things I read on the internet it was difficult to do and it never came out right. After reading tons of blogs and watching countless YouTube videos I set out to cut fabric. Turns out it is super simple and it took me no time at all to make an awesome fabric appliqué.

Here’s a little step by step on how to do it yourself.
Things you need:
1. Heat N’ Bond Ultra hold - I picked up a package of this at Jo-ann’s

2. Fabric - I used regular quilting fabric

3. Regular cutting blade - I’ve had my machine for 8 months and haven’t changed the blade yet and it cut just fine. Just make sure there’s nothing stuck to it or the housing.

4. Standard Cutting Mat

5.An Iron and a sturdy surface to iron on - My ironing board is super flimsy so I iron on a scrap piece of wood I have lying around my craft room.

1. Cut out your fabric. Make it bigger than your design.

2. Place your piece of fabric on your Heat N’ Bond and cut around it.

3. Iron on the Heat N’ Bond to the wrong side of your fabric. Make sure to read the instructions on the packaging.

4. Once it’s completely adhered, place it Heat N’ Bond side DOWN on your cutting mat. Your mat needs to be sticky to hold your fabric in place. If it’s not your fabric could catch the blade and shift around.

5. Cut out your design! I used the Fabric, Printable setting in the custom cut settings.

6. Once it’s cut out, remove the paper backing from the Heat N’ Bond and iron it on to your garment. That’s all it takes! 

Bonus: To make my fabric edges look more finished I cut an outline layer of glitter HTV and ironed that over the top of the fabric.

I can’t wait to give this to my friend and her new baby. I’d love to see your fabric projects your make with your Cricut! Or let me know if you have any questions. Just leave a comment below. 

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Think you can only cut fabric with a Cricut Maker? Think again! We’re going to show you just how easy cutting fabric with Cricut Explore can be. If you love to sew or simply want to add fabric accents to your Cricut craft projects, this is a must-read.

We love our Cricut Explore machines and sometimes they get a bad rap because people think that they’re just too limited. It’s true that there are some tools and materials you can only use with the Maker, but there are plenty of different projects you can make with a Cricut Explore.

Cutting Fabric with Cricut Explore

In this tutorial, we’re using a Cricut Explore Air 2, but you can certainly use the newer Cricut Explore 3 instead.

Materials we’re using:

• Cricut Explore Air 2
• Cricut EasyPress Mini
• EasyPress Mat 16”x20”
• StandardGrip Mat
• Scissors
• Freezer Paper

How to cut fabric with a Cricut Explore machine

We’re using a simple craft hack here to make it easy to cut fabric with our Cricut Explore machine. To do this, we’ll be bonding freezer paper to the fabric. Since it is the paper layer that will be touching the cutting mat, you don’t need the FabricGrip mat and the StandardGrip cutting mat will work just fine here.

Iron your fabric to get out all the wrinkles. You can use a standard household iron or your EasyPress Mini. Place your fabric face-down. Place a piece of freezer paper cut to the same size as the fabric onto it with the shiny side down and paper side up. Iron the freezer paper onto the fabric using a temperature of 400 degrees.

You could also use other bonding agents like Wonder Under but this is so easy and inexpensive!

After bonding the fabric with the freezer paper

Place the bonded fabric on the cutting mat fabric side up. You will be able to use your Fine Point Blade to cut this.

With your design ready to go in Cricut Design Space, click Make It. We suggest moving the design away from the edges a bit to avoid any issues with puckering in the fabric.

You need to use a bonded material setting for your materials. Because the Explore is not marketed to use with bonded cotton fabric, we chose to use Bonded Wool Felt instead.

Load the cutting mat into the machine and cut your fabric as usual.

Remove the excess to reveal your design. Simply peel away the freezer paper and you are all set to use the cut fabric in your craft project. Wasn’t that easy?

Can a Cricut explore AIR 2 cut fabric?

Do you need a special Cricut blade to cut fabric?

Can the Cricut explore cut fabric?