Accuquilt Go Baby

Well, I jumped on the band wagon and bought an Accuquilt Go Baby.  If you are an avid quilt blog surfer like me, you couldn't have helped but notice how Accuquilt has cleverly infiltrated our world by donating their product to many of our favorite bloggers, in exchange for a published review.  Very smart indeed.

I've been eying the Accuquilt system for quite some time, visiting their website, watching demonstrations at quilt shows, etc., but never managed to take the leap into ownership.  I have a slight hang up in general about buying extraneous appliances that do the same job as something else that I already have; why buy a rice cooker when I already have have a pot.  After all, the Accuquilt does the same thing that I can do with a rotary cutter, ruler and mat, so whats the benefit?  For me, I think that the answer is two fold; speed and fun.

The fun part for me is that you stack up a several pieces of fabric, load the machine, turn the crank a few times and out comes perfectly cut shapes.  Just like magic.  No measuring (or measuring incorrectly), no rotary cutter arm cramp (I do suffer from this), no slipping or sliding, just some easy cranking.  I made this entire stack of Hope Valley and off white half square triangles from scraps (170), and binding strips from Kona yardage (16), in about an hour or so.  Not bad for my maiden voyage, plus I had fun doing it. 

Although my first experience was exciting and productive, it was not without incident.  A few of my passes produced some uncut threads that required manual snipping.  Also, when cutting my strips, the fabric bunched up a bit, resulting in a few baubles which are evident in my photos.  There are some published fixes for this so I am not overly concerned about these fewsnags.  In general, I received good results and am quite pleased with my purchase.