Making Basket Blocks with the Accuquilt 8″ Qube
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Back again with the next installment of retreat news… and more about the basket blocks and how I made them with Dione’s Accuquilt 8″ Qube…
Other than the Cleopatra’s Fan die, I was very keen to check out the Accuquilt 8″ Qube (affiliate link) that Dione got at the beginning of the year. When I had my little shop, the Qube’s had not come out yet, so I’d never seen one before…
Basically the Qube is a set of dies, packaged in a very cute way… when you take off the cover, it looks like a little bookshelf…
As you can see, the cover says you make make over 72 block designs with all the dies that are included in the qube..
The two bigger “drawers” each have 4 dies in them…
And fold out like this:
Each die is numbered which makes it easier if you are trying to follow the patterns that are given with the set…
I thought trying to choose from 72 block designs was a bit overwhelming… so I did flick through the book by Eleanor Burns, and decided to make the basket block…
Once the shapes were cut, chain piecing made the blocks come together pretty quickly…
I also brought my little travel steam iron with me, so I just sewed up the blocks, and pressed them on the portable ironing board next to my sewing machine..
Quick and easy!
Just a tip for Bernina users…. with the way Accuquilt dies cut the fabric, I have found that using Bernina’s 1/4″ foot (#37) does not work – the seam allowance is wider than that. I will try to take a picture of what I mean one day… in any case, I used the #1 foot, until I got a bit frustrated that I couldn’t really see where I was going… So I changed to the #20 foot and it was much better – the right seam allowance, and I could see what I was doing…
I ended up sewing 9 blocks… here they are on my design wall…
They look pretty good I think… I will probably put plain squares of batik in between the blocks… or more baskets because I cut out more bits while I could use the dies:
Dione gave me some of her lovely Island Batik scraps to cut up and put in my basket blocks.. so this quilt will have a bit of Dione in it 🙂
Now you might be starting to understand why I didn’t have a chance to blog while I was at retreat… with all the cutting, and then some sewing… and then more cutting and sewing… because the next thing I started working on was strings… with a frog or two thrown in….
Back soon….
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All sounds so good, that I’m looking forward to seeing you when we can catch up. Take care.
Just beautiful and what a good time you had!
I agree–you can’t just use your own 1/4″ seam without checking it with the blocks you have cut! I have to tweak mine every time I sew them up–no biggie but it sure saves a lot of
headache later on! I like the idea of using the open toe foot!
the baskets look great in the batiks….
Hugz
Thanks for the next installment, look forward to each of your posts. The house is all ready for the next influx which is due today sometime. A full house and a couple of day trippers this time.
How beautiful! I am always so inspired by how incredibly productive you are!!!
Hi Joy, Since I have the 8 Inch cube block set it was nice to see how simple the basket would be. I have not done anything really yet except cutting squares, rectangles and smaller squares out of scraps. Thanks for sharing. Nancy
I won’t be investing in one of these but they are most interesting to see in use and how much you can create with them. If I were more of a ‘sane’ quilter I would definitely be looking more closely at adding it to my tools. Looking forward to seeing what you do next!