Here is my latest quilt and incidentally Bloggers Quilt Festival entry. This is a quilt I started making on a whim a couple weeks ago. When I was at the Paducah Quilt Show I stopped by the Moda Bake Shop booth and they gave out little packs of 2 1/2 inch squares---I'm not sure if there is a name for these--don't most of Moda's pre-cuts have dessert names? Mini layer cake? No...it should be a diet layer cake! ;) Anyway, they were 2 1/2 inch squares from the line California Girl by Fig Tree Quilts. My first thought was, "Yay! Free fabric...how cute!" and my second thought was, "What the heck am I going to do with just forty-two 2 1/2 inch squares?" Thinking I probably wouldn't really be able to use them, I let my girls play with them on the ride home...and they had a great time...scattering them all over the car. Once we got back to Minnesota there were several quilts I needed to start working on, but I kept looking at that little pile of squares...trying to figure out what I could possibly make with them...this is what I ended up with:


I had been wanting to make some type of zigzag quilt for a while but I just hadn't gotten around to it. So I decided to cut my squares in half and arrange them into a couple of zigzags on a (surprise!) white background. I knew piecing the zigzags was out...unless I wanted my finished quilt to be microscopic. So I opted to applique the triangles to the single piece of background fabric. I first drew some guide lines with a water-soluble pen and then laid out the triangles. For the applique, I wanted to try something new.

While at the show I bought some Bo-Nash bonding agent (it's fusible powder). I had heard great things about it for repairing holes in quilt tops, but after seeing the demo at the show I was excited to try it for applique...I hoped it would be a quick and easy way to stick the triangles down before sewing. Once I figured out how to shake it on without the powder going everywhere, it did work like a charm! To make applying the powder easier, I folded a piece of paper in half, dumped a little of the powder in the crease and then used that to shake it into the space where I wanted it...that made it easier to control how much was applied and where it went. After I ironed it all down I stitched around everything with a blanket stitch.