You Go! Baby!

A few weeks ago, Accuquilt generously sent me a Go!Baby cutter, with three dies of my choice.I chose the tumbler, hexagon and parallelogram, shapes that take a bit more time to cut than squares and rectangles.

As soon as it arrived, I enlisted the help of a cute little assistant. It was easy enough for her to use and she has had a lot of fun with it on several occasions.

The first project I tried was to cut hexagons, initially for an Aurifil thread giveaway. I stacked three layers of squares on the smallest hexagon.

 Some of you have already seen my hexagon flower.

Here is the completed project.

Then I tried a hexagon pencil case, designed by one of my favorite designers, Amy from During Quiet Time.

Amazingly, the large hexagon on each end of the pencil case was exactly the same size as the largest hexagon on the die cut.

Gotta love nice coincidences like that!

(Yes, I blatantly "borrwed" Amy's cute photo ideas with the pencil and eraser...)

Finally, I tried the tumbler die cut. This made good use of the fabric, with not too much waste. It successfully cut through three layers of fabric. It can cut through more layers, but I only used three. Once in a while, I had to clip a thread here or there but mostly the die cleanly cut through the fabric.

My brother's daughter is going to Texas A&M. I found some Aggie fabric at Fat Quarter Shop (they have others too!). So again, a chance to do two things with one project: test the tumbler die cut and make a quilt for Elizabeth's graduation. I used a pattern found in a magazine for inspiration (Best Quilts for Kids, quilt designed and made by Joanie Holton and Melanie Greseth), and made some changes. The designers had strips made from squares and I decided to change the dimensions of the quilt and use strips of tumbler blocks instead. I sewed four tumblers together and then cut off each end to make a rectangular strip.

It is a simple quilt made from rectangles of the Texas A&M fabric, along with strips of solids and tumblers in a random fashion--the same number of units in each row, just rearranged for variety. The added benefit was that there were few seams to match up!

My original thought was that if Elizabeth isn't crazy about having a Texas A&M quilt, then maybe her boyfriend would like it. But then I found this fabric for the back. She is a business major with a fashion merchandising emphasis. Perfect. But it pretty much guarantees that Fred will not want this quilt.

Accuquilt is also offering free patterns by just signing up for their newsletter. They have lots of information on their website so check it out. Just click on the link there on the sidebar to the right.

Would you like a Go!Baby of your own?? It's easy. Leave me a comment. Make SURE you can be contacted in case you are the winner. What should you comment on? How about this: Is there something most people don't know about you? Here's the time to spill it. Random Number Generator will choose the winner on October 4 at noon PDT, so there's plenty of time to comment.

So start commenting! Your comment doesn't have to contain anything personal (or you can just say "pick me" if you want to...) But here. I'll help you get started. I never eat blue M&Ms. There. See? Easy peasy.

Comments are now closed. Thanks, everyone, for your wonderful and insightful comments!