PQ 10.2 Cozy of Last Resort

 As soon as I heard the challenge, I knew which stash of fabric was going to come out and play.  It was a set of red, white and blues I collected after finding a cute little dress in a thrift shop and deciding the colors were perfect for a quilt.  The reds were easy.  I passed up the white polka dots in my collection as being too transparent.  The blues were harder to match.  I have found that blue is actually a very hard color to match.   They are not perfect but they work.  I tried cutting the appropriate sized triangles and much to my surprise, made it all the way through the stack of fabrics.  Unfortunately, I realized I need twice as many little white ones as large colored ones.

 After much head scratching, internet perusing and seam ripping, I got the hang of using the triangle paper to make flying geese.  It was not entirely self explanatory.  It also required a degree of dexterity that I was missing.  I was making good progress once I got the hang of it all.  However, by Friday morning, I wasn't even half way through piecing.  Even with doing multiple rows at a time to cut down on trips to the ironing board, I just wasn't getting it done.  Another thing that actually made a great big difference was switching from my tiny and sturdy BL9 to my larger machine.  I had to (horror of horrors) change it from embroidery to sewing but that thread cutter and larger sewing surface really make a difference. 

 

Thus it became time for the cozy of last resort.  I call it that because once upon a time, the infamous Quilt Chicken made an air freshener cozy at the last minute just to say she had completed the challenge.  It is  a lovely cozy and a wonderful lesson in get 'er done.

I went to my stash and found the adorable snowpeople in trucks fabric along with the snowflake/star fabric.  I had to argue a bit to avoid getting started on another complicated design.  This was going to be your basic alternating blocks.  A quick table runner.  I did have a blue fabric similar to the red stars but I didn't want to think that hard.  So it is a just a basic checkerboard.

 

I should have started here in the first place.  My skills are very rusty.  There was joy in cutting and sewing simple blocks.  I managed to line up most of my corners and iron most of my seams in the right direction so they all laid flat.  I don't usually even take pictures of the back of my flimsies, let alone post them but I am pleased with how this worked out.

Here it is appropriated shot on a pile of melting snow.  It measures 16" x 24",  The batting turned out to be thicker than I thought, so the quilt is a little puffy for a table topper.  I did a simple cross hatching quilting.  I decided that because I found the walking foot before I found the FMQ foot.  It is the simple things, I know.  An important reminder to self.  Quilting causes the fabric to recede.  I should have quilted over the red squares leaving the snow people to pop out.  However, I knew the white thread would show my errors on the red.  Yes.  I could have gotten the red thread but I didn't think of that until I was already started.

Here you can see my only sort of wavy lines.  It turned out better than I hoped given my rusty quilting skills.  The walking foot is a wonderful invention!

 And an art shot just because I finished in time to try and take arty pictures rather than desperately snapping a blurry shot just to get it linked in time!

Easy Tumbling Blocks

I need to save this video.  It shows how to strip piece tumbling blocks.  This is a quilt pattern I love but...  without inset seams I just might try it.  It isn't as easy as she makes it look. There are plenty of places to mess it up. However it certainly looks doable.