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Dies to Die For

I was asked a while back what my favorite Dies are for my Accuquilt Go.  I’m finally getting around to answering that request.  If you know me you know I find cutting the necessary evil in quilting.  My Go cutter has made that evil process more manageable.   To say I love it may be an understatement.  

My favorite dies are probably my strip cutters.  I have the 2 1/2″ (jelly roll) die and 1 1/2″ die.  I use both of them a lot.  Not just to cut strips cut to sub-cut those strips into squares.  Like in Floating Boxes, 

and Fruition where I sub cut strip sets to make quick easy nine patches and sixteen patches. 

 I did the same thing with the 1 1/2″ strip cutter for Gradation.

My next favorite dies are my half square triangles.  I have a 2 1/2″ hst die that can cut up to 36 hsts in one fell swoop.  It’s totally awesome!  I don’t worry if my scrap doesn’t fill the whole die.  I just load it up with scraps and crank out as many as I can.  It makes cutting out for Harvest Sky

Scrappy Bear Paws 

and Whisp go so much faster.

 Finally I have a 12″ cube.  With it I made Funfetti using the parallelogram.

 Cut out kits for my Modern Gems quilt class in less than a day.

 Made quick work of a bin of orange, yellow, blue and green scraps to make this quilt.  

It contains dies to make rail fences, flying geese, half square triangles, hour glass, and square in a square blocks.  Let me tell you it is wonderful!  The 8″ cube is on my wish list.  My neighbor has the hexagon die that she lets me borrow.  It’s a great way to cut out a grandmother’s garden quilt.  One of the young women in our neighborhood broke her foot at the beginning of summer and we kept her and her mother from going crazy by supplying her with hexagons. She almost made a whole quilt. Hope this helps you know what dies might be right for you.  So you can spend less time cutting and more time sewing.

2 Comments

  • Rebecca Grace says:

    I bought myself a GO! Baby cutter thinking I would use it for cutting up scraps, then realized that most of my scraps are too small or oddly shaped for the die shapes available. Now I'm wishing I had the larger GO! cutter so I could cut up some of my larger scale prints into apple core, clam shell, etc. that would go together quickly, show off the prints, and turn into quilt tops for longarm practicing. But the strip cutters kind of mystify me, and I'd love to see a tutorial on using them. I mean, I'm imagining trying to get a folded piece of fabric positioned just so on the die with the grain going all in the right direction, running it through the machine, then opening the strips up and discovering that they are ALL cut crooked with "Vs" in every strip because I didn't lay them out perfectly. At least when rotary cutting strips I can check each one as I cut it and adjust as I go. Am I missing something?

  • em's scrapbag says:

    I don't fold my fabric. I cut it into larger strips and line them up on the strip cutter to ensure everything is on grain. I can cut 9 width of fabric 2 1/2" strips at one time or 12 width of fabric 1 1/2" strips. It is so fast and no Vs.

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