In case you were wondering, I have not turned in my appliqué needles for knitting needles. Here is February’s UFO sighting: This is one of those crazy quilt deals like Stack-N-Whack except the cuts are all random. I made these blocks quite a few years ago and did a little bit of machine quilting on it almost every evening in February.

Once upon a time there was actually some sort of plan for the borders and what this quilt was supposed to be in the end … only the border fabric got separated from the blocks along the way. Now I can’t remember what it was, but I decided it’s going to make a nice little kitchen table runner once I get the binding on (perhaps the binding will be my goal for March).

If you want to try it out for yourself, this is a fun little project. Here’s how:

1) Stack up 8 squares of different fabrics a few inches larger than you want the finished blocks to be. (They will shrink up quite a bit depending on how many times you cut and sew them back together again.) Make a random diagonal cut through the whole stack at once so each square has the same 2 pieces, “A” and “B”. (A sharp blade on your rotary cutter really helps here.)

2) Mix the pieces up so that each square has different fabric for the “A” shape and the “B” shape. Sew the new pairs together. (Don’t stress overly much about making them exactly square. You can square them all up at the end.)

3) Stack the blocks together and repeat cutting, mixing, and reassembling until you get a good mix of crazy quilt pieces in the blocks, then square them up.

4) Rotate some of the blocks when you sew them together into your quilt top and it will be hard to tell that they are the exact same block “pattern”. Or repeat with 8 new pieces of fabric and mix the second set of blocks with the first for a larger quilt top with even more variety.

=(^_^)= happy quilting!