It arrived!
It has a spiffy green bag that will help protect it somewhat from the free-floating Auggie hair in my sewing room.
All pristine and shiny new. Almost as pretty as a brand new box of crayons.
It came with the 8” block GoCube, which is a set of mix-and-and match dies to make a boatload of traditional blocks. Each die comes with a block pattern, and then there’s a booklet of patterns in the GoCube box.
It also came with this book of patterns by Eleanor Burns for a sampler quilt using the dies in the GoCube. I don’t know yet that I’ll do the sampler—I don’t usually like samplers, but this would be an easy and fun way to get used to using the dies in a variety of combinations.
I was unreasonably tickled by the fact that they have little green ribbon handles on each of the die cases in the GoCube.
And look at all the other stuff that came too!
The package includes the 2 1/2” strip die and the long cutting mat to go with it.
The pennant dies were a freebie because I’d spent over a certain dollar amount (ahem). I’ve been wanting to do banners appropriate for the various holidays to hang on my mantle in the family room so, bang! (Now I have no more excuses.)
I added the purchase of the 5” die myself. I have a lot of pattern books using jelly rolls and charm packs so I figured having a 5” die as well as the strip die would make it a lot easier to use up some stash. Yes, I’ve been cutting my own right along, but this will be a lot more time-efficient.
(And yes, you can see my shelter-at-home-office-wear slippers. I think I’ve worn real shoes three times in the last four weeks.)
The AccuQuilt was delivered shortly after lunch. Other than pulling it out of the packing box, I made myself wait to play until I was done with my work day. At the end of my day I was waiting for someone to call me back after he got out of a meeting, so at that point I treated myself to watching the instructional DVD that came with the GoCube.
(And yes, you can see the webcam that I spend most of my day using on end-to-end Zoom calls, sigh.)
By the time my colleague called me back I’d finished the DVD and read through the Eleanor Burns sampler book as well as the other smaller pattern book that came with the package (it was apparently a very long meeting!).
So once the call was done, bingo—I was off and playing!
I decided to use a charm pack I’d gotten in a Sew Sampler pack that wasn’t a favorite, and then I pulled the half square triangle die because it was exactly the right size to put a 5” square over and get a clean cut. (It was actually a little close on the edges of the die but it worked.) I chopped up the whole charm pack, pulled a few of the triangles together and sewed them together into a pinwheel.
It took me maybe 15 minutes to cut the whole charm pack and I think it only took that long because I’m a newbie. It took about 5 to sew the block together.
OMG, LOOK AT THOSE FREAKING POINTS!!!! And this was without any pinning until the very last bit where I sewed the two sides of the block—I pinned the middle seam. But I don’t know that I would’ve had to. It went together like a dream.
I’m so happy.
(Editor’s note: It’s is just entirely possible that the author of this blog may have already ordered two more dies—one with three different bird types, and an owl die. Because we all know how she feels about pudgy birds.)
