Just for Fun

Sometimes WIPS do actually make it back to my Bernina and into “finished” status! After making a lap quilt and another art quilt from Tula Pink’s Tabby Road collection, I had one square left from nearly every fat quarter. I sorted then into backgrounds and potential hearts 💕 …pieced and MistyFused in place… layered and fused to batting and backing…did some quilting then…got distracted ;).

Last month I was in between big projects and had great fun finishing the quilting. Stitching around the motifs of Tula’s designs is FANTASTIC practice for anyone’s free-motion quilting skills.

In this square, stitching around the eyes felt like skiing around moguls:

While outlining these pattern details was a more precise process:

And the cat food cans demanded to be outlined then brought forward by teeny tiny matchstick quilting around them:

Of course I had to give the kitties some fur:

Pure play and a great thing to do for yourself if you have squares left from a big project you’ve done for a friend 😁! It gives you a tremendous appreciation for the fabric designer; I found the mice hidden here that I had completely missed in the big quilt ;). It is also interesting to study their color palettes…choosing my Aurifil shades for this fabric collection reminded me just how many shades one color can have.

So…stitch up that little quilt for yourself and you’ll have a perfect project waiting for those little slices of time! Consider doing this as a fun retreat project too :).

Time-saving tips:

-pre-wind a few bobbins of monofilament (i change thread colors so many times in a project, I would go crazy stopping to change a bobbin each time)

-MistyFuse all layers! This way you can have a party with your quilting right out to the edges without worrying about any shifting of layers.

-use Aurifil’s boxes to keep your thread palette in order..the slots also hold needle packets, bobbins and (small) thread snippers…great for easy travel to a retreat!