Saturday, April 9, 2011

On the fence

So I waver back and forth about purchasing an AccuQuilt cutter.  I'm watching YouTube videos of it in use and sometimes like it, and sometimes don't.  It just seems like there is a lot of 'precutting' work.  But then if I think about the little mismatched scraps I have and how I could use the cutter to make uniform shapes out of them, it seems like a reasonable tool.  Then I think about the price.  Ugh.  It sure isn't cheap. 

One of the quilts I would like to make in the near future is a tumbler quilt and AccuQuilt has a die for that.  There is also a ruler/template for it available from Missouri Star Quilt Company.  I'm just thinking there has to be a shortcut to making the tumbler pieces using a regular ruler.  I'm sure it has to do with all the pretty little angle lines on my six by twenty four inch ruler that I try my darndest to ignore...  haha.  Going to have to explore that a bit more.

2 comments:

swooze said...

I have similar feelings as you.

June D said...

A Suggestion:

Check around and see if there is a quilt shop or adult education class that has an Accucutter that your can use.

Here in San Diego I can drive north to Quilter's Paradise in Escondido and use one for $10/hour with endless dies available or I can go to adult education and use the one there for free (they only have four dies now though: large tumbler, small tumbler, charm square, and 2.5 strip).

It's good to have an ironing board handy. And I found that I didn't have to do any precutting if I stuffed the extra fabric to the side of the tray so it was out of the way while I was cutting. Because I didn't precut, it took a lot longer to get my cutting done than I thought it would. The results will be good leader and ender projects!

: )
June