Something you may know about me is that I love working on all kinds of projects. I have a real interest in creative things like DIY projects for the home, sewing, and photography to name a few. And while I have a lot of ideas of things I'd like to do, I don't have a lot of time to devote to some of them.
For example, I really wanted to work on a quilt for the baby girl we're expecting in January. As a stay at home mom to two kids, I struggled with the idea of finding time to cut out any pattern, piece by piece, so I could move on to the faster parts of sewing and finishing the quilt. {If you've never tried your hand at quilting, believe me, cutting out the pieces can take forever.}
Luckily, I saw a little blurb on a website for a local fabric store about the AccuQuilt GO! Baby die cutter and I started digging for more information. At the end of that search, I was in contact with someone at AccuQuilt who gave me a green light to try this out for myself and share with you what I thought about it.
The GO! Baby is small but it's become something that made me wonder why I ever bothered with hand-cutting quilt pieces before. Every shape that can be cut on the GO! Baby is dog-eared to help with matching up ends, and has a built in 1/4 inch seam allowance. This is HUGE! I can now have the perfect, cut shape every single time without even trying.
The AccuQuilt GO! Baby comes with a nice little dust cover. It weighs about 10-15 pounds and is really easy to set up and store away.
There isn't even a whole lot I had to do to get it set up and ready to use. I just set it on my cutting mat, pulled down either side {they have magnetic closures} and just had to grab the dies I was going to use for my quilt.
This is the GO! Tumbler- 3 1/2" Die I used for the GO! Tumbler Baby Quilt I'm making for the baby girl on the way. To get myself started, I cut the fabric I bought into strips that were 3 3/4" wide. I wanted to make sure to leave room for error. Then, after measuring the die's length, I cut that strip to be about 11" long. This made the perfect fit for the die and I knew I wouldn't have a lot of salvage or issue with using the GO! Baby cutter.
The neat thing about GO! baby dies is that you can stack up to 6 layers of fabric on the die at one time. Now, the die I was using would cut 3 tumblers per layer of fabric meaning that in just one pass, I could get 18 cut shapes. There's no way I would be able to accomplish the accuracy of each cut in just a few seconds on my own.
After stacking up 6 layers of fabric, I put the cutting mat on top and then lined it up to be cranked through my GO! baby cutter.
I'll admit, I was a bit skeptical at first. I thought I was really going to have to crank the cutter to get it going. I was really surprised to find that I was not only wrong, I was really wrong. I only hand to turn the crank but the die went through quickly and easily. That means cutting my 18 shapes at once happened even faster and easier than I thought it would.
After pulling away the salvage, this is what the shapes look like on the die after going through. I did have a few minor issues here and there where I needed to cut through a few threads to separate the shapes from the salvage but it really wasn't that big of a deal. I certainly wouldn't call it a complaint. The fact is, in just one afternoon I had an entire quilt cut out and ready to be put together. {And that's with all the stops and starts that come from being a busy mom of two.}
I think that the AccuQuilt GO! baby cutter is not only really fun and easy to use, it's also well worth the investment. I'm already shopping on the website to see which dies I'd like to buy next. You know, after I browse through all the free quilt patterns to see which one I'd like to whip up when I'm through with this one.
I'll be sure to post a follow up when I have the quilt sewn and completed to show you what my baby girl will be getting from me. :)
**Thanks to the company or pr agency, who supplied the items to facilitate this review. I wasn't compensated in any way. In this post I share my thoughts and opinions of the item mentioned. Others may have a different experience or opinion.**
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