The Big Shot

I was reading Melanie’s blog post the other day about her experience teaching at the Great American Scrapbook Convention and all the tools and gadget that scrapbooker’s have available and it got me thinking about something I bought earlier this year that was made for the scrapbook and paper arts market but that I use with fabric.  I give you the Big Shot:

Now I have an AccuQuilt GO die cutter machine and it’s great but one of the biggest drawbacks to it,is that it is not compatible with any of the other die manufacturers products and there are a TON of very fun,very cool dies out there being made for the scrapbooker’s that kept catching my eye every time I went into the craft store.  So for less than $100 I bought a Big Shot and it was money well spent!  And I’ve picked up a few dies…

Some of my favorites come from the Tim Holtz line and all of them work just as well with fabric as they do paper.  I just put some Mistyfuse on the back of the fabric I want to cut first,put the die on the clear spacer plate,put the fabric on top of the die and cover with another space plate:

Roll it through the machine and voila!  perfectly cut shapes ready to place and fuse:

Now this next set of dies I’m going to show you are very very cool because they let me cut the outline of a circle instead of just a whole circle.  These dies are thin metal and they come as a set of 8:

You’re supposed to use them one at a time to cut perfect little circles but I found a much more fun way to use them.  Since they’re so thin you have to use them with the additional multipurpose platform that the Big Shot comes with.  I put a clear spacer on top of the platform and then put my fabric (Mistyfuse side up) on top of that. Then I placed several of the circles on top of the fabric  and covered  with another clear spacer and then rolled it through the machine…

And I got perfectly cut ready to fuse in place rings of fabric.

Love that!

And so the big question is how many layers of pre Mistyfused pieces of fabric can you cut at once?  Well with the thin metal dies I’ve only done one layer at a time but with the Tim Holtz and Sizzix dies that you don’t have to use the multipurpose platform with I’ve done 5 layers of fabric at once:

So the next time you’re in the craft store you might want to pop by the paper crafting aisle and see what other treasures made for scrapbooker’s might come in handy in your fabric studio!