Fun With The Go! Baby (Lots of Pics)

I have to tell you that I've been having so much fun playing around with my Go! Baby and have managed to crank out a couple projects in short order!  This machine is addicting!

The first project (well really the second project - I'll get to that in a minute) is a fun baby quilt that I made out of Riley Blake Designs, Quite Contrary line.  I used the Go! Baby Tumbler die:

Excuse the folds - I didn't have anyone here to hold it up for me!  This was so much fun and easy to do with the Go! Baby.

Here's a brief tutorial of what I did.  First I placed a layer of fabric on the die (you can layer up to six layers - I was doing a test run):

Placed the cutting board on top:

Then I gave the handle on the side a crank so that the die goes from one side of the Baby Go! to the other,  and look what I ended up with:

And TA-DA!

Simple, huh?  And in about 15 minutes, I had this:

Enough Tumbler blocks for my quilt - about 168 Tumblers!  Amazing!  Do you know how long this would have taken me the "old fashioned way?  Hours of tracing and cutting!

So now it's time to sew and it was so easy!  Because the corners are notched the pieces fit together perfectly:

Which results in such perfect piecing:

You just gotta love when your seams match up so well!

From there it was just making rows:

Sew the rows together, add some borders and you have a great quilt.

I also cut out some repros!  I have a ton of left over fabric from my Farmer's Wife quilt:

I'm not done with the quilt yet, but I couldn't resist putting a few repro tumblers together.  Woo Hoo!  I'm well on my way to the Tumbler quilt that I kept putting off because I didn't want to cut out (by hand) all those Tumblers!  With the Baby Go! it was so fast and I'm well on my way to having the quilt I've wanted for a long time.

The first project I actually did was a pincushion.  I know that you've all seen them here and there.  I did them with the Hexagon Die, and again, it was short work!  Unfortunately, the pictures flew into cyberspace somewhere due to operator error (thank goodness the Go! Baby has no blades that could cut me because I don't do well with some devices sometimes - LOL), so I recreated a little bit of it.  Anyway, here's the pincushion.  I know that if you're a fan of Blackbird Designs you've probably seen them:

Isn't it sweet:  I used the Go Baby! Hexagon die.  The die comes with three different sizes, 2", 3" and 5" - the seam allowances are built in (sorry for the glare in the picture):

For my purposes, I used the middle size - 3".  Using one size out of the three is not hard to do at all.  I simply laid my pieces of fabric over the die area and cut.  There was no shifting of fabric and the pieces came out perfect.  I had some 2-1/2" hexagon papers and turned the edges over the papers and pressed.  You can also baste your seam allowances down in a more traditional way, but for my purposes with this being a smaller project, I just used the papers and pressed my seam allowance to the inside.  Then I zig zagged the edges together:

When I came to the end of the seam I added another hexagon, swiveled the needle and continued on:

It was so quick and easy.  As I mentioned I don't have pictures of the original one due to operator error, but I just continued adding layers to the piece for a total of three rows.  Here's a partial row just set together:

Once your three rows are completely put together, you cut a circle for the back (this is where the Baby Go! Circle die would have come in handy), trim the edges of the hexies to match the circle, sew right sides together - leaving the seam open enough to turn right side out - stuff your piece and you're pretty much done. I added thin twine and a cute vintage button and it's finished:

I think these would be cute using all three of the sizes that come with the die and using different orange fabrics, making some cute pumpkins for the Fall season - make one of each size and stack them.  How cute would that be?

So there you have it!  A couple projects made with the Go! Baby Tumbler and Hexagon dies.  I still have another die to play with and I'm in the process of figuring out what to do with that one - I'll have that to show when I announce the giveaway!!

I can't say enough about how much time this Go! Baby saves.  And you don't have to be a quilter to make use out of this machine.  There are dies for squares - perfect for pin pillow backings, circles for pincushions like the one above, yo-yo's or a circle qult like the one I made a while ago:

Or flowers or stars - all sorts of things that quilters and non-quilters would get a variety of uses from.  The possibilities are endless.  So while you're waiting for the giveaway, take a look at all the dies available for the Go! Baby at Accuquilt and pick out three that you think you'd love.  And who knows, you may even get hit by the quilting bug.  Cutting out all those shapes for a quilt or whatever project you do would be fast work with a Go! Baby!!!

Have a wonderful 4th weekend!