in love with my new baby

You know how it is when you have a new baby. You want everyone you know to 'Come and see the baby.'

Well, meet my new baby! It's an Accuquilt Studio and this baby is a real work horse.

I got it with the $1000 donation from Fresh and Easy I got way back in March. It took a long time to decide what to spend the money on. I already have a Go! cutter and love it. It makes very accurate cuts and I have a lot of the dies for it. Was it really worth getting the super duper heavy duty Studio cutter too?

I didn't want to take the Go! cutter to my Binky Patrol meetings because I knew it was going to get a real workout. I was a little afraid that with so much use it would break. It isn't meant to be used 12 hours a day. The Studio is!

So, I got the Studio and the 1 1/2 inch, 3 1/2 inch 6 1/2 inch strip dies because those are the sizes we use for the most often made quilt our group makes. We LOVE Mary's Quick Strippie quilt from maryquilts.com and have probably made over 1,000 of these guys. Now, with the Studio cutter and these dies, we can make 1,000 more in the next month for Japan :) I also got the 2 1/2 inch strip die for all of the bindings Rhoda, our binding beast makes. Last night, my littlest guy and I cut about 1,000 binding strips in about 10 minutes. He did the rolling and I laid out the fabric. And I'm not exagerating either. Of course, they still have to be sewn together and pressed, but that's what my friend Carla is for :) Love you Carla!

I also got the Take 5 die. It has 5 pieces on one die and you just lay your scraps on and it will cut out a quilt block which is then sewn together and you have lots of ways to sew it together to make great scrap quilts. You can find the pattern for this quilt by searching Take 5 on google.

Today I was planning all of the custom dies I'm going to have made. I want to be able to lay a fat quarter on the die, roll it through and have quilt blocks ready to sew.

So, I hope you can see why I love my new baby. Want to come over and play with me?

We are having Quilt day on Wednesday April 27. If you live in Northern California, maybe you are close enough to come and play. I sure hope so. I would love to share the fun with you.

I have these buckets of fabric that need cutting up, plus plenty of yards and yards of fabric on the shelves.