"What Century Are We In?"

LOL.  DH was willing to let me have one of those cutters until he saw they were hand cranked via a video.  The look on his face was priceless.  It was like he was thinking, "And what century are we in now?"

He was not about to fork over several hundred dollars for a hand cranked die cutter.  For the price they wanted he thought it would be like a printer where you just shove the die/fabric in and the machine would move it through automatically.  Once he put it like that (he's rather blunt and knows me well) I had to agree.  As of right now, I don't need it.

If you need a cheap option, get a Shape Cut template:

I have both the 1/2 and 1/4 inch ones.  Line up the fabric and stuff your rotary cutter through the slots.  If my strip isn't exactly straight, I just cut to that mark and realign the strip.  I still have to bend over and my cutter catches on the open slots, but it works great.

Here's the progress so far on this quilt:

It still doesn't look like much but I have more sewn on the other side.  As I've trimmed more blocks, it's easier to work through the strips.  The book had a great idea of sewing an internal "rectangle" on it's side and then sewing the four corners to it.  That way you aren't trying to piece really long strips to each other.  I chose to start my rectangle at block 20 vertically/horizontally. The piece in the middle is row 20.

As a side topic, I think Bandit needs to be Janome's 7700 mascot as this is one of his favorite places to sit.