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Are you feeling sleep deprived these days? Odds are that many of you are doing major cutting projects this time of year. These projects are probably keeping some of you up very late at night. Whether you are cutting Christmas cards and tags, doing a Swap, making kid’s projects or putting together class kits, you are in the midst of a cutting frenzy. Some of you are old hands at this type of cutting but for the vast majority of us cutting 50 – 100 of something is a very daunting task.
Obviously, you do not want to cut one set of pieces, assemble the project and then do it all over again. This would not be an efficient use of your paper or of your time. What you need to do is to cut and create with the assembly line method.
Way back (Do I sound old?) in the beginning of Pazzles, I used to cut, package and sell paper piecing kits. I routinely would need to cut and package 100-200 kits for a convention. I developed some pretty streamlined methods to help me do this and I would like to share them with you.
First, make sure that you cut a lot of one piece before moving on to the next. Separate your design into color parts and have each part on its own page. Use multiple mats to speed up the cutting process. You can have one mat in the cutter, one that is waiting to go in and one that has all the cuts already done. That way you can be removing the cut pieces from the mat while another one is being cut.
Don’t forget to use the REPEAT button on the cutter. After you have sent the project to the cutter the first time, you only need to press the repeat button to cut the next page of the same piece. If you have a helper, they can be cutting and removing the pieces without even needing to use the software.
Finally, have some method of sorting your cut pieces so that they do not get scattered. It will also make it easier to assemble your project if the pieces are sorted in order of use.
Be sure to check out the video tutorial in the Building on the Basics section. It will expand on the instructions for production cutting and give additional tips for stream lining the process.
Take me to the Building on the Basics video library.
Oh I just love my repeat button. I cut in quantities so once it has cut a sheet and I need to repeat that 10 times! I just hit the repeat button and go again! Love it.
I didn’t even think about the repeat button. What a great tip! Thanks.
Yup, this is exactly what I do. I bought a whole bunch of little 3″x3″ drawer organizer cubes and they work great for sorting all the little pieces. It works like a charm!