The Brother ScanNCut SDX225 is a quilter’s best friend: fussy cutting fabric

Welcome back to the last installment of this week’s overview of how the Brother ScanNCut SDX225 is a quilter’s best friend. Yesterday I went over how this scan and cut machine can cut out images out of any paper patterns or drawings! One more thing I’d like to show you to close the week – fussy cutting – not typically a favorite, but sometimes, you just want to do it.

Do you have some cute printed fabric from which you want to cut out a specific design? Let me show you how the Brother ScanNCut SDX225 is a quilter’s best friend for fussy cutting. I want to cut out and applique Minnie Mouse from this printed fabric onto a little person’s quilt.

For fussy cutting  you’ll need:

supplies and materials

• ScanNCut SDX225
• Standard tack mat with fabric support sheet attached
• Auto blade holder and blade
• spatula
• a piece of fabric for fussy cutting
• spray starch

Supplies and materials for making paper templates for paper piecing using Brother ScanNCut SDX225

1. Prepare fabric with spray starch as instructed in the first post of this week’s series Brother ScanNCut: a quilter’s BEST friend for making quilt blocks. I like to heavily starch the fabric when I’m fussy cutting to make it very stiff – kind of paper stiff!
2. Position fabric on the standard tack mat with the fabric support sheet attached to it. Refer to the first post of this week’s series Brother ScanNCut: a quilter’s BEST friend for making quilt blocks if you need a refresher.
3. Load the mat into the ScanNCut.
4. From the main screen touch Scan, then touch Direct Cut. Save time with the ScanNCut so touch the machine icon, then Start.

Direct Cut option on the Brother ScanNCut SDX225

5. After the fabric is scanned a rendering of your fabric will appear on the screen. Touch OK.

Scanned fabric for fussy cutting purposes on the screen of the Brother ScanNCut SDX225

6. Notice the black lines around all the images on the fabric. Use the cropping arrows to crop to the image around the design you wish to fussy cut.

Cropped image

7. Remember the squiggly line icon? Touch that to smooth out the line around your image.  Touch Ok, and Ok.

8. You can now adjust how close to the image you would like to cut. Touch the double circle icon and adjust the outline distance.  I’m selecting .12”. Touch OK, and Ok.

Outline Distance option on the Brother ScanNCut SDX225 screen for fussy cutting purposes.

9. Select Cut and Start.

Perfectly cut design for appliqueing!

I took Minnie Mouse over to my Brother Luminaire XP2, appliqued her to my quilt block and then echo quilted the block. How adorable is this?

Completed Minnie Mouse block

NOW Big Surprise especially for all quilters!!! As of August 2020, Brother has introduced a new Fabric Mat for the ScanNCut. The new mat has a permanent fabric support sheet surface, so there’s no need to add a separate sheet.

I have so much more I could tell you about why the Brother ScanNCut SDX225 is a quilter’s best friend when using embroidery files to cut applique pieces and use Canvas Workspace to design and create my own quilt block designs…But I’ll save that for another month here on QUILTsocial!

Happy cutting – Happy quilting!

This is part 5 of 5 in this series

Go back to part 4: Scan and cut fabric from a paper pattern using Brother ScanNCut

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