July Table Scraps

Blue is the July colour of for the RSC sewers, and lucky me, I received a bag of scrap triangles in the mail this month. These were from Cozy Quilter Gail and they just happened to have lots of blue (and also white and green) which was perfect to make my July placemat!

I started sewing the triangles together not knowing what I was going to make. The HSTs became flying geese and you can see the layout that was starting to emerge. You can also see the Easy Breezy leader-ender block on the sewing table waiting to be finished.

I trimmed the HSTs down to 1.75". 

Yes... every single one. When you are sewing projects with smaller pieces, it really helps to trim off even these tiny slivers to make uniform blocks that will fit together perfectly.

As I was sewing and trimming these triangles I saw a zigzag quilt that Gail posted on her blog and decided it would be fun to sew her scraps into a design that she had just made - that's double the  inspiration from Gail for this project!

I tried to use as many triangles from the bag as possible, and this placemat ended up using 234 triangles. I picked out these 4 thread colours for the machine quilting.

The quilting design is a vertical zigzag using the free motion foot. I have practised many hours to be able to quilt a straight line with this foot. It is easier to get a straight line using a walking foot, but that means you have to twist and turn the entire project at every seam. The free motion foot is quick and efficient for this design as long as you can stitch a straight line.

Here is my July placemat made of 117 HST blocks that measure 1.25".

Linking up to the Table Scraps Challenge on Friday, the Rainbow Scrap Challenge on Saturday, and Wendy will link me up to the mini quilts challenge at Constant Quilters.