Gail and I have a small bag of projects that we want to work on. When one project is (more or less) done we draw another slip to see what we do next. This project was one we did because we wanted to use her GO-Cutter.

It was very slick to cut the flower petals and much easier than tracing them using Steam-A-Seam. The top was finished and sandwiched quite quickly but then I started second-guessing myself. Can I used narrowly-spaced straight lines to stitch the appliqué? Should I have stitched down the appliqué before I quilted it? How would I stitch down the appliqué pieces?

In the end, I chose to quilt the sandwich but, rather than using straight lines, I used randomly placed free-motion curved lines. This was a technique that I saw in a demo at the Saskatoon Quilt Show. I’ve had the book that was being highlighted for years but, to be honest, I’ve only used it for my 8-pointed star.

The piece was quilted, bound and completed in one afternoon. Why do I wait so long to get things done?

I was having lunch with Stacia and Ron and admired the placemats we were using. She had used mini-charms (2.5″ squares) and placed a border around them to make them the right size. I planned a couple of sets of placemats as Christmas gifts and thought this would be a quick and easy pattern.

When I got home I realized that my pre-cut squares were only 2″, which meant the squares would finish at just 1.5″. I added an extra row of squares and sewed an extra square on each row. Most of the squares were sewn together as leaders and enders. Quilting was an easy cross-hatch.

I was happy with the results.

Can you guess who gets each of these pillowcases?