It's time for some new additions to my quilting studio. I'm not much of a gadget person, but I have been in the mood for some upgrades and to try out some new products.
If you are familiar with my quilts, you know that I love circles. Over the years I have cut out hundreds of circles for my quilts. I own lots of different circle templates that I use to draw the circles and then I cut them out by hand. A tedious but mindful task. Now that I am promoting Curvalicious, I thought this was the time for a custom circle cutter for my Accuquilt Studio Cutter. I just wanted a die that would cut a bunch of 2" circles. So this frugal quilter bit the bullet and emailed Accuquilt for a price quote for a custom die. I received an email back the next day with quotes that ranged from $99-$120 depending on the number of circles I wanted the die to cut. I thought that wasn't unreasonable to save me hours of time. Then at the bottom of the email was one line that caught my eye " we also have a die for 2" circles that is currently on sale for $39". What? I clicked on the link and ordered the 2" die right then and there and also bought the 1" die also.
And ended up with a bunch of beautiful, perfect 2" circles in under a minute.
The other 2 items I purchased I'm not that crazy about. The first one, I purchased to save my iron and keep my ironing surface clean because I do a ton of fusing. No matter how careful I try to be, that fusible web has a way of being ironed onto places you don't want it to go. My solution up to now has been to lay a sheet of parchment paper down. That works pretty good but it's cumbersome.
I read about the Bo-Nash IronSlide Iron Shoe. You attach it to your iron. This is what it looked like when it arrived.
You attach it to your iron kind of Iike adding a new cover to your ironing board with the strings to tighten it. It's made to fit any iron. Although it will protect everything, I felt I lost any fine control at the tip of my iron. More importantly, the Teflon cover kept my iron from getting as hot as I wanted it.
My biggest disappointment was this rotary blade sharpener. One of the women at one of my workshops had one. It can sharpen any size blade and I own lots of different size cutters. I love a sharp blade so I went home and ordered one. I couldn't wait to sharpen a bunch of my blades. I can only say that I was underwhelmed. I tried different size blades from different manufacturers. When I inadvertently dislocated the lid, I just threw the whole thing in the garbage!
Posted with Blogsy
I have yet to hear of a rotary cutter blade sharpener that works. They have all kinds, promise all things - but none of them really WORK. We have to bite the bullet and buy new blades!
ReplyDeleteCheck website of L.P. Sharp Company. They sell rotary blades at very competitive prices or you can send them your dull blades, which they recycle, and order new ones.
ReplyDeleteI know you will make good use of those circle cutters.
ReplyDeleteHow disappointing about the blade sharpener, oh well now you know just buy new ones!
That is so neat that you can speedily cut those circles! Are you going to include cut ones in your kits?
ReplyDeleteCircle cutter is a winner, and so is the iron protector. I'm a gadget person, but have never gone for a sharpener because, as Joan notes above, there have been no reports of good results.
ReplyDelete