Away we Go!

Shortly after I posted my displeasure for sponsored giveaways on blogs, one of the companies alluded to frequently in the comments of that post contacted me and told me they wanted to give me their product and I could, if I wanted, then give one away to my readers.

I choked on my bagel. It took me all of a half hour to confirm with three friends that what I received was a form letter nearly identical to everyone else's. So any delusions of grandeur that might have made me feel that my blog was interesting, unique or appealing were lost in thirty minutes. No surprises there.

I weighed it up and realized it was an excellent opportunity to get a free product that I had been interested in and give an honest blog review about it. I wrote them back and let them know that "I'm thrilled that Accuquilt is impressed with my blog and knows what I'm all about." Of course that was a bit tongue in cheek, as it was less than two weeks earlier that I went on my giveaway tirade. At that point, the post was still visible on the front page of my blog.

So that is how an Accuquilt Go! Baby came into my possession. I got it free, and I want to do an honest review of it. Don't hold your breath for a giveaway though. From my research, a Go! Baby retails for roughly $195 in Australia not including any dies. Go! dies compatible with the Go! Baby range from roughly $29 to $82.

In full disclosure, I've contacted Sizzix, another company with a competing product which I will also review and compare features. From what I gather, very few online quilters know that competitive products exist in the fabric cutting machine market. Hopefully it will be an interesting comparison.

A Word on the Marketing
Now before I get into the review, I would like to talk about Accuquilt's current marketing and advertising model. I think it's relevant to understanding the proliferation of blog articles about the Go! cutting machines. I am, after all, a new marketing student and it would be remiss of me not to apply the little that I've already learned. I concede that I might be missing the mark entirely on Accuquilt's marketing and advertising strategy, but I'll take a stab at it. I welcome clarification and more insight from Accuquilt in the comments for my readers, of course.

Accuquilt has recognized that you, the blog reader, are one of their target markets. They realize that one of the best and fastest ways to reach you is by giving away hundreds of these machines to popular bloggers - a word of mouth campaign. The hope is that you, as a consumer, will be enticed to purchase one because you see positive feedback from others who you support. As a consumer though, I remind you to be skeptical of all reviews when the reviewer is given an item to keep for free (that includes me!). They may not want to offend the company who gave them the product or they may have incentive to say only positive things because they know that if you

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that they will in turn receive credit for more free things from the company that provided the product. By the way, apparently I am part of a "blogger team" and can get more free dies, if you click that link and sign up. I didn't make the text big so that you would; I just wanted to illustrate my point about incentives. (Though, if just 70 of you sign up, I soon could have an Apple Core die! I'm not even sure 70 of you will read this. =)

Along with the publicity that Accuquilt receives from these giveaways, they also immediately improve their market position. Accuquilt isn't just trying to sell their cutters, they are trying to sell their dies and accessories, as well. It's a similar product model to printer manufacturers who lure you in with cheap printers backed by the cost of their print cartridges. The thought is once lured in by a free cutter, you would be more willing purchase dies and accessories from Accuquilt.

Generally speaking, cutting machines and dies aren't interchangeable; so when a consumer adopts one technology (ie. cutting machine) they are locked into products from that manufacturer. By getting an Accuquilt into the homes of top bloggers, the assumption would be that those top bloggers (I guess that's me?) wouldn't even consider purchasing a competitive product like a Sizzix Big Shot.

At this stage though, I've no brand allegiance. I'm looking for the product that best fulfills my needs, so I will also being reviewing a Sizzix when it arrives.

So let's get on with the review!

My Go! Dies
As part of the promotion, Accuquilt allowed me to select three different dies for my Go! Baby. I selected a Go! Value Die Set, Go! Drunkard's Path and Go! Sparkle Diamonds. I've had the good fortune of seeing many bloggers go before me and read about their selections. Many have raved about their strip cutting dies, but I find my Sew Easy fabric guillotine a quick and versatile way to cut strips. I love how easy and quick it is to vary of the width of strips with my guillotine and to cut them with one simple motion, therefore I didn't need another strip cutter in my life.

Similarly, I heard another person mention they were enamoured with the half square triangles. Again, I already have several methods for making HSTs that I'm delighted with. My favourite is the Thangles system at the moment. These are not too dissimilar to Julie Wallace's patchwork papers. To me, sewing HSTs individually after the fabric has been cut is just a bias stretching nightmare waiting to happen. Perhaps this reflects more on the quality of my sewing than the technique, but I feel there are much better and more accurate ways to sew HSTs.

I decided I wanted to get templates that would give me versatility. I already have a fairly large collection of plastic template sets for assorted quilt blocks. I find that I often use these for one or two projects before they are cast aside. I was a bit nervous the same thing might happen with my Go! dies. It's not a fault of any cutting system, but a reality check is needed for all quilting template sets and fabric die. How many tumbler block quilts do you want to make before you're bored and move onto something else? As a consumer, you need to weigh up the expense against the longevity of use of the product.

The value die pack comes with templates for two squares and two half square triangles. I chose it because I thought it might be useful for squares. Lots of projects use lots of squares, I reasoned. I was skeptical that I'd use the HSTs, but I decided in fairness I should try them and see if they were better than my current HST methodology. (They weren't)

I wanted a traditional quilting die. Most traditional quilting dies weren't available for the Go! Baby system. More on that later. I weighed up the drunkard's path against the applecore and went with the drunkard's path simply because it would help with next month's Ringo Pie block. (there you, go Lynne! that's a clue for you!)

Finally, I've got a thing for diamonds and knew at least one of my dies would be a diamond shape. Frankly diamonds are harder to cut with traditional methods, so I thought it would be a fair test of the cutters abilities and benefits. Initially I considered the Go Diamonds, but decided I was partial to the elongated shape of the Sparkle! diamonds.

This was my first interaction for this "purchase" with customer service. I used their online system to find out what, if anything, was special about the Sparkle dies. While they were online quickly to answer, the response was rather unhelpful. I asked what was different about the Sparkle dies. I cannot remember exactly what they said, but basically it was something like "they are for the Sparkle collection". It was nearly three weeks ago now, so I unfortunately I can't quote it exactly. I do remember it felt like an unhelpful punch in the gut. It was such a curt response, I didn't bother trying to find out more. I was put off their customer service. I "bought" the Sparkle diamonds anyway as I preferred the elongated diamond shape. Upon arrival, they seem to be 1/8 diamonds as you would see in a LoneStar. I haven't tested the theory, but from visual inspection that's what I've gathered.

You'll notice two of my dies are marked with black marker. They didn't come this way. This was a helpful tip I saw on a YouTube video. This brings me to my first review point which is fabric grain.

Fabric Grain
The Accuquilt go comes with multiple pamphlets which explain that the lengthwise grain needs to be fed into the machine to prevent stretching on the bias while cutting.


If you scroll back and look at those marked dies, you quickly see that the blades of the dies are not set parallel to the sides of the die. I am not certain of Accuquilt's reasoning behind the orientation. My understanding is that in some cases for some cutters, the blades that are parallel with the die roller crack. My assumption is they are set so no blade is parallel to the die cutter for that reason.

This leads to some obvious questions when you place your fabric on the cutter.

Do you -

A. Line the fabric up parallel to the sides of the die so it goes through the cutter along the lengthwise grain as all of their pamphlets indicate is best to prevent stretching?


or B. Line it up so the grain of the fabric is parallel to the die shape that you are cutting, so the resulting cut has nice straight grain with no bias for sewing?



I tried both, repeatedly and with multiple types of fabrics. In every case, I found that A gave the truest squares. Though with quilting weight cotton, B wasn't far off in most cases and the results improved if I added a paper shim to the fabric.

Obviously the offset nature of the dies is going to be annoying in many cases. It means you have to pay very special attention as you lie down strips of fabric to cut multiple layers. If you are a big user of unidirectional prints, as I am, then the issue isn't just grain stretch. It's also a matter of getting the prints aligned nicely with the pattern orientation.

Once I realized this, I trolled the Go! quilt patterns and examples. (Sign up for free ones and I get more free stuff!) I realized most of their examples use batiks or allover prints where pattern orientation isn't noticeable. I do wonder if they made that choice simply because of the annoyance of the die orientation.

To me the fabric orientation issue is a bit annoying. I'm honestly hoping that someone from Accuquilt can add a little more insight into this issue in the comments for my blog readers.

How it Cuts
I think the first measure of a cutting machine should be how it cuts. I found I had the best results when I put multiple layers into the machine at once. I had my best results with heavier quilting cottons and linen/cotton blends. Although heavy cottons worked well. I found that standard quilting cottons did not always cut 100% and a pair of scissors was necessary in many cases to free my shapes. Much to my surprise, the machine had the most difficulty cutting Liberty fabric. Unless the machine was loaded up with many layers of other fabric, the Liberty cuts were somewhat inaccurate. I am not sure if this was simply a flaw of the machine they sent me or a universal problem.

I also had a problem with the "trueness" of some of my square shapes that I alluded to above. This improved when I followed Accuquilt's suggestion of adding paper in each time I cut. I felt guilty cutting that much paper, even if it was from my recycled paper bin. It begs the question, if it's a known issue and paper is recommended solution, then why isn't it fixed?

Machine Size
The next thing I'd like to talk about is the size of the Go! Baby. It's small and very portable. In fact, I took my to a recent craft group meeting without too much trouble. Like all cutting machines, it's quite heavy but that's to be expected as it's the weight of the rollers than engage the cutting mechanism.

For me though, The Go! Baby is just a little too small. 6" wide dies limit the size of the resulting shapes. I will say that I'm happy with my drunkard's circle template. I would be much happier with it if it were significantly larger. Most of the quilting shapes that interested me (double wedding ring, large drunkard's, rob peter) were only available on the Accuquilt's larger cutting machines, the Go! and the Studio.

While the Go! Baby offers a low cost, easily portable solution with a minimal footprint in your craft room; I feel the shape real estate available on the 6" dies isn't enough to make it a worth while for me.

(Another bit of disclosure: A while ago, I wanted to purchase an Accuquilt Studio machine for my online fabric business, but local customer support was unresponsive. I thought I might make a large investment in a product and be able to provide Japanese precuts to my online customers. I simply wanted to know where I might be able to try one out locally first. Due to lack of customer service response, I became frustrated. I determined they were too busy giving things away to help potential customers. It was then that I first became jaded about sponsored online giveaways. I vowed then never to buy an Accuquilt, as I wouldn't let my money pay for someone else's machine if they couldn't even offer me customer service. So yes, this review did have a grey cloud hanging over it from the beginning which the free machine would have to combat.)

The Physical Machine
I absolutely love turning the crank on the cutting machine. I think many people will agree that turning the knob is a thrilling experience. I can't put my finger on it, but I think it evokes memories of my Snoopy Sno Cone machine. Turning the crank is good.

Turning the crank just a few times and seeing your new machine scratched though, isn't so good.


I'm not exactly what you call a brute. I'm 4'10" and just heavy enough to donate blood. I'm not a bruiser. So my eyes dropped when I saw my new Go! Accuquilt scratched in only three days. It didn't take long to determine the culprit. On the very first day that I used the value pack die, the not-so-mysterious scratches appeared. The die had a small mar of plastic which was poking out from the back. This mar in the die played havoc with the surface of the machine.

For now, it appears cosmetic and the machine still functions, but I get a little pouty each time I see it. I fear it will get worse over time and eventually prohibit the dies from sliding smoothly through the rollers. I would expect either a stronger coating on the machine or better quality control on the dies. If I paid for this machine and it happened, heads would have rolled at the craft store. Since I didn't pay, I simply buffed back the problem with the Value die and am trying my best to ignore it.

Fabric Wastage
When I took the cutter to my craft group, one girl remarked that the die layouts result in an enormous amount of fabric wastage. While this isn't of concern to me as I am trying to burn through my fabric stash, it certainly would be an issue for anyone cash strapped and looking to conserve fabric. She made a valid point, and it was worth noting.

Overall Feelings

Please excuse my unpressed photos. I'm over two hours into the review and just couldn't face the iron. Above are some examples of things that I've made using my Accuquilt dies. I felt it was extremely helpful with the curved pieces, but of no worthwhile benefit when cutting squares, triangles and diamonds.

While there is some fun to be had with the crank, I find too many issues with the Go! Baby to recommend it to my readers. Putting aside my earlier issues with customer service and marketing strategy, I find that the issue of size, accuracy and durability to be too problematic to warrant a $195 investment in a machine followed by a $29-85 investment in a die.

For purposes of cutting small squares and making HSTs, there are other tools on the market that, in my opinion, do a faster, easier and better job than the Go! Baby cutter. I did find the Drunkard's Path template useful and it worked reasonably well, but I wonder if it is a one-off novelty that I'd use for one project and then set aside.

I believe the Go! Baby is best suited to people who like to work on a fairly small scale using solids, batiks and all-over prints. I wouldn't recommend purchasing a Go! Baby; but if you are thinking of buying one, then I suggest you wait. At the rate they are giving them away, you should be quickly moving up the queue. No need to pay when a free one is bound for your doorstep.

Everyone's experiences and expectations are different. If you are considering any product, I do encourage you to read multiple reviews. If you can, find someone in a local craft group or store who can let you try the it out. I also encourage you to look around and see what other competitive products are available.

Is anyone still reading? I know this was a long one, but I wanted to make sure it encompassed my opinions on the product. I'd like to tell you there is a prize for making it this far, but well... you know how I feel about giveaways.