Well I cut my blocks out tonight! I've made a few mistakes and hopefully learned a lesson or three to take with me if I ever make another one after this :)
First off, I IRONED...duh, mistake. And I realized this as soon as I decided to refresh my layering memory and looked at the book. So, all it really meant is that my fabric did shift a tiny bit here and there..but I expected that anyway.
Also, doing an octogon means you need EIGHT repeats...that could end up being a lot of fabric.
I did use my accuquilt go to cut my triangles. Like I said before, I did get a tad of shift but I don't think it will be noticeable much at all. Using the die means my strips need to come out 6". Fortunately this fabrics repeat, or at least mine was, was about 12 1/2" so I did manage to get two strips worth of cuts from the set of repeats. I got 32 blocks cut from my 1 set of (8) repeats.
Another mistake was that I was supposed to cut a strip for the little squares out of the repeats..and I didn't and of course I used ALL of the repeat for blocks. I think I'm going to figure out how many of those squares I need and maybe do some fussy cutting, mainly because I'm not going to do another set of repeats JUST to cut a 4" strip for those squares :)
I'm going to go to my EQ6 now and see what I can come up with as far as size and borders go with 32 blocks. I'll probably do 5 x 6 and use the 2 extra blocks on two opposite corners in the borders.
Oh, btw, my blocks will end up being 10" finished.