Sewing

Using an AccuQuilt: A Member’s Experience Making HSTs

AccuQuilt GO

Let’s talk fabric cutters. Given the Guild’s recent AccuQuilt GO! acquisition I thought I would share my experience after having had the opportunity to have a ‘play’.

AccuQuilt GO

Let me preface this by saying that in the past I have been resistant to using fabric cutters.  I heard all the rave reviews and I’ve seen the amazing and accurate results the cutting yields but secretly I really didn’t understand the hype, I just didn’t get it.  I thought they were too fiddly, wasted too much fabric and generally not worth the price tag.

I am happy to report that I was wrong with a capital W.

With about a gazillion half-square triangles to make for recent quilting bee blocks and for another project I am working on, I decided to open the 8” Qube which includes a die for 2.5” HST’s.

Now let me tell you that I make a lot of HST’s and I have tried every method of construction to make them.  I am hopeless at using the four or eight at a time method as they end up with the bias on the outside and when I iron, oops, I mean press them they always seem to distort.  Then there is the strip cutting method but again I am too rough at handling pieces with the bias on the outside.

After a lot of trial and error my go to method is to cut my squares ½” larger than the finished size HST I want to make, pair my fabrics up, draw a diagonal line corner to corner on the back of one of the squares, sew ¼” either side of the drawn line, cut along the drawn line to yield 2 x HST’s which then need to be trimmed back to the correct size.  I do not use a BlocLoc ruler when trimming as I am a press the seam open kind of girl so they do not work for me.  It’s a long and somewhat tedious process but for me this method gives the best results.

Girt By Sea medallion quilt pinwheels made with the AccuQuilt GO

So imagine my excitement when all I had to do when using the AccuQuilt GO! was to cut strips at 3.5” wide and lay them on the die.  I layered 8 strips of fabric (4 pairs right sides together) on the die and with each pass I was rewarded with 8 pairs of triangles.  No cutting little squares, no drawing lines, no trimming to size (and no cutting little dog ears because the die does all of that for you!).

Girt By Sea medallion quilt pinwheels made with the AccuQuilt GO

 

In no time (like less than 10 minutes) I had 96 pairs of triangles cut.  Now all I had to do was sew each pair of triangles together which is made even easier as the point of the triangles (those pesky dog ears) are removed as part of the cutting process.  Using my quarter inch foot every single HST came out at a perfect 2.5” square.  No trimming required.

Liberty fabric pinwheels made with the AccuQuilt GOI can’t tell you how excited I was when these units turned out so well.  It was quick, easy and accurate.  There is no turning back for me – I love this method for making HST’s.

Members can book in an hour-long session at any of our Sit And Sew Days to whip out some of their own half-square triangles! Or any of the other quilty shapes you can cut with the dies we have.

Sign up for our Sit And Sew Days here, or consider becoming a guild member here.

 

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