Dots before my eyes!

Have you ever had one of those weekends where you planned on getting things done but then it just didn't happen?  Yep, you guessed it.  That was this weekend.  On Labor Day, I tried to work on some projects but my fabric was not cooperating.  All the shades of green were wrong, the background fabric didn't look right with what I had (and I'm trying not to buy more fabric for a bit) and nothing went together.  FINALLY I threw the fabric on the floor (carpet) and stared at it.  Truth be told I also stuck out my tongue at it and I swear it was laughing back at me.

I finally pulled out my Accuquilt GO!  I haven't used it much but I ran across some purples and remembered that I have Alex Anderson's Grapes of Wrath die.  So today I thought I'd post pictures of what I am talking about in case you haven't heard of, or seen, the Accuquilt GO!

Before I get into this, keep in mind that I am not paid by Accuquilt to talk about this or anything, just passing on my experience with it.  That being said....

AccuQuilt GO!, according to the Accuquilt go website (accuquilt.com) is a "fast, precise, affordable fabric cutter that allows quilters and fabric crafters to cut fabric as much as 90% faster than scissors or rotary cutting." 

I would agree that it is faster and this project is a good example for that. It would take forever for me to cut this out by tracing it and then cutting it out, ironing on fusible backing, etc.

In a short time (half an hour?) I had fused on Heat n Bond Lite to the back of my fabric, cut my fabric and ran it through the GO! 

That's a total of 200 purple circles.  I could cut more at a time but I was positioning my material to use up some of my scraps.

The GO! folds up nicely and is easy to lay out.  You basically just "open it up".  No fancy latches to fiddle with etc.

You use these dies (this is the Grapes of Wrath Die.  Layer your fabric on top of the tie, put the cutting mat on top and run it through the machine by turning the handle.  NOW...how hard is it to turn?  Depends on your strength and how many layers of fabric you have.  I fused my Heat n Bond Lite on the fabric first so that counted as half a layer but still I was putting around 4 layers through and it went through very nicely.  As you can see the "grapes" were at the top of the die and two different sizes of leaves at the bottom.  So I could just lay the purples where I wanted them to be and the greens and cut the at the same time.  I even ran it through without green fabric on it when I wanted to get more grapes. (why am I getting hungry as I am typing this?)

As you can see....I just laid the fabric on.  I didn't fussy cut it first.  You can fold the fabric over on itself also instead of cutting.  If you want to cut the fabric more precise...you can.  Do it however best works for you.

The handles lets you roll backwards also but that is more awkward. The above picture shows where I just covered up the grapes with purple and that round didn't do any more leaves.  There isn't any way I could have cut out that many circles (and make them look like circles) that fast without the GO!

I should also mention that a lot (not sure if all of them do)of the dies also come with a free pattern.  There are also free patterns on the AccuQuilt website.  If I made this pattern as it was shown it would be around 42".  That is a bit big for where I usually hang up stuff so I'll be making a smaller version of it. 

I probably will not put all the grapes and leaves in the border.  Just use the center part.  Will see how it turns out.  Next step on this one might be to cut out my background fabric and iron on everything.  Perhaps this next weekend will be a better weekend.  Not sure.

Break time is over.  Time for me to get back to work.  Everybody have a great day.