One of the offspring had day surgery this morning bright and early – we left the house at 6am and didn’t get home until almost 1pm and then I played the part of nurse off and on the rest of the day. I really had no expectations of making any headway with week 4 of Bonnie Hunter’s myster quilt titled En Provence.
However, I underestimated the benefits of using my AccuQuilt studio 2 and it wasn’t just in terms of time spent cutting fabric. I had some perfect sized fabric pieces that were pretty close to what I needed for the dies – anything bigger than 3 1/2″ wide would work.
The great thing about the studio cutter is that the dies specific to this particular cutter can cut up to 10 layers of fabric with one pass. And the die that has the center triangle (neutral fabrics in this case) has 4 cuts of it on the one die so that’s 40 triangles one time through. And the die for the side pieces is similar. It literally took me 5 minutes to cut all the pieces needed for 80 blocks. Woo hoo! But wait – there’s more! The dies also have the dog ears trimmed so it not only makes it so easy to match up on each end but I also don’t have to trim them when I’m done.
I chain pieced the entire 80 blocks on the right side, pressed those open and then chain pieced down the left side.
As I was ironing the left side open, I cut the blocks apart so the only thing I needed to o to each individual block was to trim the threads so they don’t get caught when I am ready to piece these into the larger quilt pattern.
Voila! I am here to tell you – I really thought it would be tomorrow before I made any real headway on this week’s blocks but the time I saved with cutting as well as the pieces trimmed to make it fast to piece together helped make this a breeze. I got about half of the latest Splendid Sampler block embroidered while sitting in a waiting room today so that one isn’t far behind being complete.
And my other big news – I had an email earlier this week from Alison at Stitches of Time that I was her Christmas ornament giveaway winner! I was so excited and am looking forward to seeing the package since she’s so talented!
Linking back at http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2016/12/mystery-monday-link-up-part-4.html so you can see everyone else’s progress too!
So that’s your secret!
Yep! That’s definitely it!
I too am jealous of your cutter! Happy sewing and hope your patient is all better.
Wow, that is impressively fast and a great result. Big tick on good use of your precious time.
I’ve taken a few days of vacation recently which is helping too because I have big chunks of time to work on things. It’s nice to see progress at the end of the day!
That is really quite amazing! Woo Hoo you are the Cutting Queen!!
A friend of mine had told me about this Accuquilt Cutter and it is on my Wish List!
If you get one, let me know! I’ve very slowly added to my die collection; I started with the 2 1/2″ strip die and use that one all the time. The qubes are expensive but they do include a lot of different shapes that make it really easy and fast to put together an interesting quilt.
I will let you know. I am concerned about the space. My room is limited. So I was thinking of the accuquilt go.
I have the Go and really like it. It’s not so heavy that I can’t pick it up but when I’m not using it, I fold it up and leave it on the floor so it doesn’t take up space.
Great “pitch” for a die cutter!!!! Accuracy and speed are fabulous!!!!!! Hope all are recuping in fine style!!!!!!
I really do like it but I guess that’s obvious!
Yup….not too subtle…LOL!!!!!
You are way ahead of me but I can see why now that you explained the Accuquilt cutter. Now I’ll spend my day being grateful for the tools I have and chastising myself to keep me from envying your Accuquilt.Your pieces look lovely and like they will piece together without losing their points. Yay, you!
Isn’t that the way life goes? Someone always has something I’d like to have and I find myself saying “if only”. I’m very grateful to have it – it’s made my life much easier but you’re absolutely right that a rotary cutter does the same thing.