Cutting Projects

I was intending on writing a post along with a couple of pictures from our last two weekends. Only the internet in the hotel I am in right now won't let me upload any pictures to blogger. Sad. 

So...

In keeping with my theme lately of quilting and sewing projects.... I'll finish this post that I had already uploaded the pictures when I was at home.

I receive an email newsletter from a small quilt shop about 20 miles from my house. Once, when looking through the shop's website, I noticed a little blurb at the bottom about renting a machine (die-cutter) they have for cutting shapes out of several layers of fabric at a time.

So I drove myself over there to ask about using it. I ended up renting it for a month's period of time. I could go to the shop and use it any number of times for the four weeks (for the ridiculously cheap cost of $10).

I dug through my stash and found a ton of Christmas fabric. I also have quite a bit of blue and yellow fabrics I bought a long time ago for a project that I decided to not do. Out came the iron and I ironed all those pieces and headed to the quilt shop.

This is what the cutter looks like. I was cutting 5 inch squares. You can make out the outline of eight squares on the die in the picture below.

I layered about four or five pieces of fabrics on the die....

.....placed a thick piece of plastic over it all, and rolled it through some rollers....

.....and POOF! Five inch squares! (And some scraps. But in the quilting world, scraps are good!)

Just look at that stack! It would have taken me hours to do all that with a rotary cutter. I have two stacks like this and I did them in under an hour!

Now, if you know me, you won't be surprised if you get a quilted table runner for Christmas,

now will you?