This past week the girls and I decided it would be fun to make some appliqued shirts using my new toy the GO! Baby Fabric Cutter. I recently got this great new machine and I think I might be in love. I've done my fair share of applique, but the idea of cutting all the shapes out always seemed to un-motivate me to do very much.
The GO! Baby Fabric Cutter is a machine that can be used for quilting or applique and is made by AccuQuilt. Basically, you purchase dies of all different shapes, run them through the machine and it cuts them out perfectly every time. I have three dies to go with my machine right now, but there are tons to choose from - I have the little critters, birds, and flowers.
My girls and I picked out some scraps of fabric from my stash that we thought would be fun on some little t-shirts that I picked up at Walmart. I added a light-weight fusible interfacing to the back of each fabric scrap and away we went.
The machine is not operated by anything but a hand crank on the side. I would lay the fabric on top of the different dies and the girls would turn the crank to cut the fabric through the machine. They thought this was so fun to actually get to help mommy with a sewing project. Mind you, my girls are only 2 years old and 3 and a half and they had absolutely no probably turning the hand crank. You definitely wouldn't want to leave little ones alone with the machine, but it was great with grown up supervision. I asked each of them what shapes they wanted on their shirts and we cut everything out accordingly.
Once all the shapes were cut, I removed the paper backing from the interfacing from each of the different shapes. Then we laid out the different pieces on each shirt. The next part was all up to me, but by then the girls had lost interest, so it work out just right that way. I ironed the appliques onto each shirt and then did a combination of machine stitching and hand embroidery on each on of the shapes.
I love how these shirts turned out and I think the girls love them even more! It's not very often that I get to work on sewing projects with my little ladies, since they are so young, so this was pure joy for me (and them, I hope)!
The GO! Baby Fabric Cutter is the smaller of the two machines offered by AccuQuilt. They sell a larger version that can accommodate bigger dies, but for my purposes, the GO! Baby is just right.
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