My 0.02$ on the Accuquilt and how it works

The short story is that I sold myself :D. The long story is that in my country, quilting is not very popular, not to mention modern quilting or quilt fabric stores.

But a couple of month ago someone opened the first quality, modern quiltinf fabric here. Just in case you'd like to take a look, it's called Fabrix.ro. The prices are european, not american :D [ ~10 euro/meter], but, hei, we're in Europe :)), and the owner is a very very nice person.

Plus, the Brother people here are very opened to new things and extremly kind, so we have things moving around here.

So why not have an Accuquilt tested here? So, yeah, I sold myself, wrote to accuquilt and 5 days later received the Go!Baby cutter and the oportunity to give one to someone from my country [unless one of you lucky internationals win it :D]

We are now celebrating International Babywearing Week, so the giveaway will happen sometime in the next two weeks, but I already made some pics and here's how it works. It wasn't very clear for me either when I saw it online.

So, I got the Go! Baby cutter. You'll se later what does it means.

The cutter works with dies. These dies are made from a wodden board, blades, and foam to cover the blades and fill the places between the blades.

You first have to choose a die. I chose one for my mom, she makes a lot of evening dresses and makes a lot of appliques. And I will tell you later about the other machine we have, also used for cutting applique shapes.

So, first step, take the die, blade/foam side up.

place a couple of layers of fabric, die size, on the die. I used 3 layers of fleece and one of thin poliester [I had some leftovers from a babywearing cover, that's were the weird chose of fabrics came from :) ]

Put the plastic protection on the fabrics.

Take the cutter, 

open it, 

and place the die, fabrics and plastic cover on one side [any side] of the cutter.

Rotate the handle [my son's favorite part :). It is that easy!]

 The cutter has two rolls inside, that will press the sandwich so bad, that the blades will cut through the fabrics. And leave some marks on the plastic protection.

When you lift the plastic protection, you'll see this:

Take the leftovers out 

And enjoy the flowers :) 

And arrange in a pleasing manner :D

Now, because I have the Go! Baby cutter, I can only use certain dies. The problem is that the cutter itself has about 6 1/2" or 17 cm width when opened. So I can only use small dies and cut small shapes. I have the tumbler one and while I think is terrific, and the cutting is just amazing, the tumblers are just too small for what I like to do. At 3" finished it would take a looot of tumblers to finish one baby quilt. On the other hand, if used  for small crafty stuff [I can see a dozen had bands with this flowers :)], it would be terrific!

If I was to make quilts for selling, and sell them outside my country :D, [where no one would pay 2-300$ for a quilt :D] I would totally buy a bigger cutter. And use it daily :)))

Yes, there is some fabric loss. But are you kiddin' me? Cutting anything in 5min tops would help me make [&sell] enough quilts to compensate for the fabric loss. And even more :)

And the clipped corners for the tumbler or triangles...or the drunkard path.. priceless :)



I also read Badskirt's [Amy] opinions about the accuquilt. And while I do believe their blogging campaign was a little too much, and there was a point where I could not stand to hear about accuquilt anymore :D, I do like their products. A lot! And just to be clear, I received my cutter for making it available to my romanian public, I don't think they even know I have an english blog, so these are my thoughts, not a payed opinion :). I just love these products !