Owl Eyes Mini Quilt

Last weekend (August 5) I took an all-day workshop with Elizabeth Hartman of Oh, Fransson! at Sew Modern. I have been so excited for this class--I actually called and signed up as soon as I got the email announcement. And then made various piles of my scraps. And moved them around. And started over. And changed my mind again. And so forth.

Owl Eyes mini quilt

In the class we started two mini versions of quilts from Elizabeth's book Modern Patchwork: Owl Eyes and Looptastic. These two quilts use very different methods of applique. I prefer the method used in Owl Eyes (at least for constructing the quilt top—the quilting was difficult!). So I also managed to get that mini finished up today.

Backing/binding fabric

I ended up using Insul-Bright as the batting in this quilt, because I am going to use it as a hot pad on my kitchen counter. I have been thinking of making something like this for months, as when the 12-year-old makes cookies and I am making dinner, I always end up with too many hot things for my stovetop, and my poor formica counter can't take anything. Which means I end up making a mishmash of cork trivets and potholders to handle the bar cookie pan or whatever i think might be the coolest of the hot things.

For the quilting I did a simple random free motion loop. Which got to be a bit messy, because every time I stitched up onto the appliques, the machine would slow down. I don't know if this is because of the applique layers, or the zigzag applique stitch itself, or the Insul-Bright. But I chose to not stress about the resulting large stitches. If I had, I would still be working on this.

My quilting needs more practice—an ongoing theme

There is not much cooking going on these days, however. It has been 85° in the kitchen every afternoon lately. Not that that stopped me from having the iron on....

Around the shoot

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