Weekend Project: Six of One, Half Dozen of the Other

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

My Statistics Professor in Grad School

(& Undoubtedly Many, Many Others!)

So, the thing that attracted me to this particular potholder pattern (yes, we're still talking about the potholders that I am making for my Grandmother to give as Christmas gifts) is that it does not use bias tape to finish the edges. Frankly, I have a difficult time making bias tape look really nice - and I want these to look really nice.

However, after assembling the potholder bodies, as I considered quilting them I realized that this pattern has its own particular challenge. In particular, I wanted to quilt in a tic-tac-toe pattern that enclosed the center square...

That would be the center square on each side.

You know, the side that I could see while I was stitching and the side that I couldn't see...

Sigh...

As a first step, I quickly hand stitched around the center square on each potholder, trying to line up the squares as closely as possible. I think you can just make out some of my yellow stitches along the bottom edge of the red square in this picture:

The hope was that these hand stitches would keep the squares lined up as I machine quilted each potholder. The results - not perfect - but I have to believe that they came out better than they would have if I had not done the hand stitching first...

Here's the side I could see:

And the side that I couldn't see:

Let's just hope that my Grandmother likes them because she loves me, and that her friends like them because they love her. ;)

I'll be hand delivering them this week - I'm flying out to Missouri to spend a couple of days with her. :)

And now, let's repeat the mantra:

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.