Quilt Blocks

The last thing I finished up (sort of) this weekend.

It started out as pre-working for a swap but. . .

I don't think I made these quite right and I just couldn't get them "crazy" enough.

The swap was for crazy quilt blocks made with foundation piecing.  I got the technique down but the sizing may not be quite right.  The block on the left is definitely too small.  The finished block was supposed to be 12.5 inches.  But I cut my foundation fabric to 12.5 so once I got all the piecing done the block was too small.

Ok, no problem.  That could just be a practice block.  I didn't embellish it at all and cut out new foundation fabric (about an inch larger) for the next block.

That's the second stab at the block.  The size was right but as I was embellishing it I realized. . .I'm not good at crazy embellishment.  I added some ribbon here and there and some random embroidery but I didn't really want to add all kinds of buttons and stuff.  Because I had used wild fabrics I didn't feel like hiding them under a bunch of junk.

Then it sunk in that maybe I wasn't ready to participate in a crazy quilt block swap.  So I dropped the swap before it assigned partners (the host was taking forever to assign, which was kind of a red flag, too--best to just cut my losses on that swap).

Not that these blocks are "losses".  I love how they turned out.  I love this technique for using up scraps.  On a smaller scale, you really could use up some scraps.  These larger ones tend to make a bit more scrap than I like.  That's always been my beef with paper piecing (which this pretty much is just without the paper--I found the paper aspect of paper piecing super annoying).  But if these blocks were smaller they would be practical for scrap busting.

See that chipmunk there in the center?  Yeah, I was all about that fabric this weekend.

OH, and while I was pawing through my scraps I found two fun pieces to use for some polaroid blocks.  Now those I'm really enjoying.