Silhouette Tutorial: Cutting Longer Than the Mat

If you checked out my post a few weeks go on the Faux Vinyl Garage 'Windows' I installed, than you got a quick and dirty mini tutorial on cutting longer than the Silhouette mat. But since it was kind of just a footnote I figured it was worth repeating here since I know many of you don't want to be limited by the 11 or 12" cutting mat when cutting vinyl.

One of the nice things about vinyl is that you don't have to cut it with the cutting mat.  That means your only limitation is the width and even that we can get around.  You have seen my tutorial on cutting over-sized stencils, right? The same basic principals work for vinyl, too.  Anyway, since vinyl comes in 10 foot rolls you could hypothetically cut the entire roll in one cut. 

But how to do that...the key to cutting vinyl longer than the cutting mat is your settings. You have to make some adjustments to them because if you cut like the defaults are set for, only the part of your design inside the cut area (basically most of the mat) will cut.  You can see in this example, where I'm cutting out my 'window panes', only the first two panes and a portion of the third will cut because the cut line is currently set to 8.5 x 11 (standard Portrait).

To change this, click the Page Settings icon.

First adjust the page size.  Since my vinyl is 20" long I change the width (from the standard 11") to 21" (just for extra padding).  Adjust this number to account for however longer your vinyl piece is.  Once you do that, you'll  see the white area, that indicates the vinyl, has extended.

However, at this point the machine will still only cut 11" wide because you can see the cut border is still halfway through the 3rd block. That's because, by default, it's limited by the size of the cutting mat. Once I change the cutting mat settings to "None", the cut border will be extended to 21", as well to match the length of the vinyl.

Now you're all set to cut your piece of long piece of vinyl without the cutting mat!   As a side note, Silhouette now sells 12x24" Cameo cutting mats so it's now possible to cut more materials than just vinyl that are longer than the standard mat.  No such luck if you're a Portrait user.

Note: This post may contain affiliate links. By clicking on them and purchasing products through my links, I received a small commission. That's what helps fund Silhouette School so I can keep buying new Silhouette-related products to show you how to get the most out of your machine! 

Thanks for coming to class today at Silhouette School.  If you like what you see, I'd love for you to pin it!