"GO"-ing to be so excited!!....but then I already am!

I AM SOOOO EXCITED!!! My wonderful husband and my very good friend have made it possible to own one of these fabric cutters. I love to quilt but I hate the cutting process. I find it tedious (like doing the ironing) and just want to get to the sewing and playing with the designs part. I have drooled over the US Go-cutter machine for at least 6 months, entering every competition I could to win one. The postage from the US was the killer and made it undoable to own one,........or so it seemed!! I happened to be at my local patchwork store, who happened to have over 100 craft magazines donated and were offering them for free to customers. I just happened to pick up one issue that wasn't too old and it just happened to advertise an Australian stockist of the machine. Imagine my joy - they were here in the great aussie!! I of course checked it out and their prices were very reasonable and so were the dies, and the lovely gentleman who coowns the store was bringing down the prices even more!! Yes! This is the website here.....http://www.quiltingpatchwork.com.au/.

Pondering this for several days and the fact it is still quite an outlay I came upon an idea! An idea which has turned out to be a wonderful arrangement. I asked a good friend Karen if she would go halves with me. This minimises the cost of the machine which try as I might, I cannot use for 24 hours alone so still room to share!! There is also another great benefit - we can afford twice the dies between us that I could get on my own! Another win for both of us!! Oh I am so excited, so excited, so excited!!

I rang the gentleman in Qld this morning and ordered the machine. Even better news - it could be here as soon as this Wednesday!! Yaaaah again!

Here are the dies we ordered........perhaps we could hire out its use to some quilting buddies and get even more dies??



and a few other cutting mats to go over the dies when they go through the machine. The strip cutter is going to be wonderful for making jelly rolls and jelly roll quilts, binding, etc. It is going to get a lot of use! Imagine cutting circles fast, let alone accurate - penny royal quilt here I come! Suffolks puffs, applique, etc. so many uses!! I have been collecting scraps of fabrics for quite a while now to do a winding ways quilt. I saw a pattern last year in the homespun magazine that was scrap blues and white/creams. I was surprised to see whites and creams mixed as this was a 'quilting' no-no or so I thought but it looked wonderful. I got to thinking as blue wasn't really me and decided why couldn't I do it in pinks and white/cream. So every project I have finished I have put the scraps in a bag for this project and I have had a few donations from members in my quilting group too. It will be so easy to cut out with the go which even puts notches on the curves to make matching for sewing easy. No more having to mark every piece with a pencil - that saves me tonnes of time as there are 100s of pieces in a winding ways quilt!!
This is an example of a winding ways quilt - if you stare at it, it starts to form circles that overlap. Mine will look a lot different from this one - for a start a smaller block size and more of them! But the GO is going to help me with that!!

All the other geometric shapes are all the shapes that would be used in a 12" block and we are actually purchasing as a block set which makes it cheaper. So basically any block we want to do as a 12" we will have the pieces for and we can participate in the BOW that accuquilt are publishing - fun!!

So once again, soooo excited, soooo excited. Thank Karen for helping me to make this possible!! And to my hubby as this is my 40th birthday present for earlier this year! Gotta love getting something you just adore! :)