It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas.....

I had an early Christmas today.  A box arrived, and in it was one of these:

Sizzix Big Shot

For those that didn't go to the Festival Of Quilts and have a demonstration and practise session with the lovely Katy Jones from I'm A Ginger Monkey -it's a Sizzix Big Shot die cutting machine, and it's brilliant!!  You buy different size and shape dies which then cut out lovely neat shapes for your quilting and other projects, and it saves you hours of cutting things out which are not even or square- so hopefully your blocks are squarer and life is easier, yay! I'm all for that.

I bought a square, triangle and rectangle Sizzix bundle with the machine, as I figured there are lots of quilt patterns that start out with these shapes, and it would be a good base for me.  I also bought a numbers die set so I can cut out the numbers for the fabric Advent Calendars I need to make without all that cutting out of individual numbers, which is really tedious!  

And so tonight I will be testing it out, and playing around with some fabric, oh what a glamorous life!!

If you have one of these, or a similar machine I would love to hear your thoughts on the machine, good advice on their use (it was pretty effective when i trialled it), and if you know of any good value websites and shops that sell the dies etc (any brand).

Oh yes, and don't mention it to my Mum, as its what she's getting me for Christmas, and I may have opened it a couple of days early, so shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!

Ange x