When the moisture is gone the mat dries out and will have cut marks and dull your blade.
Cutting mat has grooves.
Remove the mat and place it back in the machine face out.
When you use a rotary blade on a hard plastic cutting mat you leave a small groove in.
If you have a self healing cutting mat it needs to be re hydrated to stay self healing.
I just gently bend the cutting mat over the edge of the table or over a coffee can.
The mat will be soft and be like new again.
It might not seem like a big deal at first but over time all these grooves add up and can affect your cutting accuracy or worse snag your fabric.
That s all you have to.
The idea of using the back of the mat for cutting batting and fleece is a good idea too.
Cut the artwork opening in the normal fashion with the mat face in.
Soak the mat in room temp water for about and hour let dry.
Reset the mat borders for the desired spacing of the v groove from the mat opening.
To clean the fabric whiskers from my rotary cutting mat i dry scrub it with a greenie which is really designed for scrubbing dishes.
It reminds me of a c filter material there is a trick to removing all of the fabric particles from the cuts in the mat.
A v grove provides an accent line around the outside of a mat opening giving an effect similar to the ruled lines on a french mat.