Cutting perfect circles with Olfa and TrueCut Circle Cutters

I hope you’ve stuck with me all week for my look at the great variety of rotary cutters on the market. Yesterday, I showed the cutters which produce the very funfaux chenille technique by easily slashing through multiple layers of fabric.

Today I’ll show how to cut perfect circles with the Olfa Rotary Circle Cutter and the TrueCut 360° Circle Cutter.

Remember the little metal compass we used to draw circles in school? We could set it to whatever size, twist them around and voilà, perfect circles. Well, these cool rotary cutters are pretty much the same, only instead of a pencil, there’s a cutting blade attached so cutting circles has never been so fast and easy with such accurate results.

As I confessed in some of my earlier posts this week, I’m a big Olfa fan and still have and use my first rotary cutter, the original yellow straight handle 45mm rotary cutter which I bought way back in 1991. I now have one of each size and kind of all their cutters and I was so excited to try the Olfa Rotary Circle Cutter, which will cut perfect circles from 1½” to 8¾”. There are convenient markings on the handle so you get the exact size circle you need.

Fabric, paper, leather, or how about those thicker, stiffer materials typically used for home dec or bag making, like vinyl, Bosal flexible foam stabilizer and interfacings? No problem! The Olfa Rotary Circle Cutter cuts through everything with ease.

And who says you have to cut circles? Cut a series of concentric arcs to build a rainbow – now I just need the right colors of felt! Lol!

The key to cutting such perfect circles is to keep even pressure on the cutter while rotating, and to keep your movement fluid; avoiding stops and starts, which can sometimes lead to some jagged edges if you slightly move the cutter. Like everything else, practice makes perfect  so do a couple of test cuts to get into a rhythm before cutting that good fabric. But I must say I found each cutter super easy and super fun to use!

TIP This is definitely a time I’d recommend spraying your fabric with Best Press or Dylon spray starch, which you may already have in your laundry room, before cutting to help stiffen and stabilize the edge of the fabric, which will also help deter ravelling if using woven fabric.

The other cutter I tried was the TrueCut 360° Circle Cutter, which perfectly cuts circles 2″ to an impressive 12″ wide. The base of the cutter is quite formidable which helps prevent the fabric from shifting while cutting.

There are full detailed instructions, including impressive color photos, to optimize accuracy and safety. Though the blade of the cutter is small, it’s still a sharp blade, as is the little metal pin which anchors to the fabric, so be sure to read the instructions before use. As someone who confessed in an early post that I sometimes don’t read instructions, this time I did and yes, by following the instructions the product will work better with better results. This holds true of everything, so yes, let’s read those instructions!

The cool thing when cutting these perfect circles is you end up with both a positive and negative piece, so you can play around to achieve some fun results to use for a variety of applications. Sew many possibilities!

I hope you enjoyed this week’s look at rotary cutters; how they’ve changed through the last 40 years, and how the many types of cutters allow you to do many fun, creative things so quickly and easily with accurate results!

Be sure to read the instructions! Lol!

Happy Cutting!