My good friend Nicole got married three weeks ago.  (It was her wedding and wedding present that I was talking about in this post.)  Thankfully, it’s cooled down significantly and I was able to finally sew Nicole and Stephen their wedding present.

My goal was to make them pot holders, similar to the ones that I made for Tim and Lesley, using this tutorial.  This time, rather than follow the directions for the patchwork, I decided to just piece together scraps in a crazy quilt look.  I was thinking that this would be faster than cutting out all those strips.  It wasn’t, at all.  It was actually far more time consuming than I thought it would be.  For one thing, I’d never done it before and didn’t have any directions on how to do it.  So I just had to figure it out as I went – trial and error.  I did get much faster at this technique by the end of the project.  By the time I finished the patchwork piece, I was really enjoying it and might even attempt similar projects in the future!

Here’s the patchwork top:

And from the back:

Look closely and you’ll see where I came to my senses and decided that I didn’t need to press every seam open. 

I then cut the patchwork piece in half and quilted the two pieces to a layer of batting, a layer of speical heat-resistant batting, and the backing material.  I added binding and ta da!  Pot holders!

I quilted in straight (but purposefully non-parallel) lines on one and quilted around some of the shapes on the other.

My favorite part of this technique is the amazing variety of shapes that you end up with.  I didn’t sew on these tiny, tiny pieces of fabric but after sewing, trimming, and more sewing, sometimes that’s what you end up with.  Here are a couple of my favorite sections.

I love that little triangle (in brown, at the top).

Congratulations Nicole and Stephen!  We’re so happy for you!