Tuesday ToDo #15

 Last week I had a couple of meager goals:

1.    Finish the first set of blocks for the Finger Lakes Log Cabin quilt. ✔︎

This past Saturday we had a cool morning and I was in the mood to sew, so I actually managed to finish this task! It took me all day, but I even managed to add the two extra pieces that the pattern called for. All 24 blocks had an extra right edge piece and then 18 of those had an extra piece added on the top edge.

2.    Start cutting out the Hatter quilt. I probably won't take the time to cut out all the pieces... ✔︎

I spent several hours on Sunday starting to cut out the papers for this project. I don't particularly like cutting out quilts, but I discovered it's far worse to spend hours cutting up cardstock. I got bored with that and soon found myself looking around for a laser cutter. Then I ran across the Cricut Maker 3 as a viable option. I spent the rest of the day watching videos on how they cut fabric and using the design software. After spending several hours talking about buying a many thousand dollar laser cutter, I had no difficulty getting my husband to agree to this purchase. LOL 

I was happy to discover BlockBase+ can export SVG files so it was really easy to transfer my block into the cutter design software and play with it.

I ended up cutting out the pieces from a ream of cardstock we've had kicking around our house for decades. It is 9½" wide and too wide for most printers, but it worked fine for this project. I think the Cricut prefers 80# cardstock and this was only 65, but it worked OK. I lost quite a few pieces when the paper tore but it was certainly an acceptable success rate for my first day. I could very well have been doing something wrong with the layout or settings. I know I still have a lot to learn.

This isn't remotely enough papers for all the pieces at once, but I am hoping I'll be able to remove them as I go along and reuse them. This took quite a while to cut all these, but not nearly as long as hand-cutting would have taken and they're much more uniform.

For this next week my goals are:

1.    Scan the quilt design(s) I like from my library book.

2.    Start fussy cutting and gluing the fabrics on the papers. For non-fussy cut pieces, see if I can cut them on the Cricut.

3.    Work on Design Wall in sewing room.

Thanks to Chris for hosting the weekly ToDo linkup. You can visit her blog for this week's link party.