AccuQuilt Ready. Set. Go! Baby Quilt Challenge

The Island Batik challenge for April was to use our AccuQuilt Go! machines to make a baby quilt. My original plan, back in January, was to make something using the 8″ block die set they generously gave us, but where is the fun in that? I purchased a set of curved piecing dies instead.

I chose to use the Robbing Peter to Pay Paul die set. It is just the right size to use with this gorgeous 10″ stack of Caribbean Breeze that Island Batik included in my Ambassador box. They also included coordinating yardage. (The Aurifil threads were already in my stash, and didn’t actually end up being used in this project.)

The first step (after spending an hour to get that pretty photo with all of my photography toys) was to get out my AccuQuilt Go! and get cutting. I did press all of the squares to remove creases, and I cut the yardage into 10″ strips to make my life easier. I actually did all of my cutting on the kitchen table during the Super Bowl, so forgive my lazy photo efforts.

You can cut up to 6 layers of fabric at one pass with the AccuQuilt. I found it to be very accurate, with no shifting of fabric. After cutting my test block, I realized that if I lined up my fabric carefully, I could cut the arc shapes from the pieces leftover from the centers. It isn’t the way the die is designed to be used, but I was able to use my fancy fabrics with very little waste.

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I did cut out a full 10″ stack, which is 42 pieces of fabric. I also cut about a yard each of the red and yellow coordinating fabrics. Way too much for a baby quilt, but once I got started, I just wanted to keep cutting.

This is the waste from what I cut. It looks like a lot, but it is much less than I would have generated if using a rotary cutter and rulers. Also, there were no cutting mistakes, injuries, or sore wrists.

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If you can’t stand to waste fabric at all, you can always make fabric twine! I feel like the miller’s daughter, spinning my scraps into gold.

Okay. Back to the quilting. The one thing that kept this from being a very fast project was the multicolor design. Traditionally Robbing Peter to Pay Paul is a two color quilt. Yawn. I prefer to use all of the colors. My design wall was very helpful for this process – it allowed me to come up with a layout I enjoyed and kept it all organized. This layout was my first draft.

This is where I decided to drop anything with browns in favor of the bright colors. This is also where you can gain sympathy for my husband’s insistence that my design area have a door he can close. When the creative fever strikes, there is literally fabric everywhere.

As an experiment to show myself how important accurate cutting is, I did very little pinning when piecing the curves. I also didn’t square up my blocks after piecing. These are things I usually do to increase accuracy. When the fabrics are cut perfectly, even imperfect seam allowances give you a well pieced quilt. You can see where my piecing could have been more accurate on the curves, but I am very satisfied with the final product.

I didn’t take any photos of assembly, but my basic process was to take down all of the colored centers and the yellow arcs first and piece all of them with chain piecing. Once they were done, I put them back up on the wall. I then took each center piece and the arc from the right, stacking them all together, and chain pieced them. Then put them back onto the wall, to make sure they were in the right place, and assembled the next stack. It is a bit of a tedious process, but as it all comes together it is amazing.

For the edge I decided to continue my circles. The traditional finish is for a straight edge, because most quilters are sane. Not me. I had plenty of extra pieces left, and who doesn’t love to bind a scalloped edge? she says sarcastically.

I quilted it on my longarm, using a peacock feather design from Urban Elementz and variegated thread from Superior Threads. I used Warm and White batting for this one. The binding is the same bright pink with dragonflies I used in the March challenge, from the All Aflutter collection.

Quilt Specs
Dimensions – 53″ x 53″
Fabric – Caribbean Breeze by Island Batik
Batting – Warm and White
Thread – Superior Fantastico 5027, Cha cha
Quilting Pattern – Peacock Plumes

Oscar enjoys being a quilter’s dog.

Have you considered getting a fabric cutting system? I’ll be honest – I have been on the fence about them for a long time. Now that I have had a chance to use this one, I wish I had treated myself a long time ago. It makes one of my least favorite parts of quilting so much easier and more accurate.

I hesitated when I ordered this die, wondering how often I would want to make this pattern. Now that cutting is so easy, I can say I will be making a few more. I want to explore different color combinations, and maybe a few different pieced block options. Now that the cutting isn’t a challenge, I can take time to be creative in ways I might not have bothered exploring before.