At our guild meeting Saturday, one member gave a fun demo on the Accuquilt cutting tools. I learned something new right away - that you could add fusible to fabric BEFORE running through the cutter, and your applique parts would be ready to iron on. Duh!! That seemed so logical, yet it had not occurred to me.
The demo also gave me a nudge to go home and pull out my own Accuquilt out of the closet, and reacquaint myself with what I actually had. I have the Accuquilt ME, which is a small one. There were 3 dies in with my things - a Hunter's Star die, and 2 different size triangle dies. And - not surprising - there were some UFO parts and pieces in a bag with the dies.
Obviously I had cut a pile of triangles from a flower print. What was I planning to do with them? I have no idea, so I pulled out some leftover speckled neutral, and cut the same number of triangles to go with the flowers to make HSTs. These will be my Leader/Ender project this week as I work on my focus projects.
Laying on the "design floor" right now are the Brighten blocks that I've been making for Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I still need to do a little color rearrangement, but basically it's ready to set into rows. There are blocks left over - "seed" for another quilt maybe.
The Blue Jay blocks are also ready to set into rows. There are 12 blocks, plus a couple of narrow borders for this quilt. Another possible flimsy by the weekend?
For hand stitching this week, I'm going to finish the pumpkin table runner binding first. And after prepping many many yards (16 WOF strips) of red binding yesterday, I have a Quilt of Valor and 3 patriotic placemats ready to hand stitch the binding.
I'm linking up today with:
6 comments:
You've been really busy! I like my Accuquilt and use it when it makes sense. Yesterday I quickly cut 9 2.5" strips, 4 2.5" strips that were then subcut into 2.5" squares. I've read about doing that but never had but with 60 squares to cut it made sense to me. It was pretty fiddly but it did work. Except I came up one block short. I'll be cutting that some day soon. I went wild buying dies after I first got the cutter. But I haven't been tempted to buy anything for quite a while. Even the sales aren't perking my interest. I'll stick with what I have for now.
Have fun with the Accuquilt--it really is a nice addition to your quilting tools. The RSC looks great!
So many wonderful projects! My leftover blocks become 'seeds' too. I was thinking about buying an Accuquilt but just haven't plugged the trigger yet. :)
I haven't been using my accuquilt a lot the last six months or so as the quilts I was making didn't need it I so often wish I hadn't purchased a lot of the dies I got I thought I would use some of them more than I have and some have not been opened (they were on sale so I got them now wish I hadn't )
In cutting the triangles with your dies, here is a little hint-I layer my fabric strips with right sides together and then fan fold 3 times and cut. That way your triangles are all layered with their partner. It's just a little faster that way.
I like the offset of the Brighten blocks. I'm afraid if I got an Accuquilt I'd stock up on dies and then feel guilty about not using them enough. (Our guild has dies to lend but since I am an as-the-spirit-moves designer I'd have to do too much planning.)
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