54-40 or Fight!

 We are at the 3rd challenge in this season of Project Quilting, which just seems crazy because usually we hit this point about mid February and here it is only the first week of the new month. 

This challenge is a block challenge, and it is actually a block I had never heard of but after I saw it fell in love with. 

There are some blocks that I don’t like for whatever reason, like the monkey wrench, or the snowball, I see quilts with those blocks and I instantly dislike them. So to have this pretty block as our challenge was a bonus. 

The story behind the block is a political slogan that was used by the 11th president of the US, President Polk and had to do with the creation of the border between the US and Canada. Since I am currently listening to my husband give me the daily news and weather  update word for word and yapping on about the mystery balloons floating over the US…😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫 I will just say if you want to know more about the history behind that slogan just google it! LOL 

It’s been a busy few weeks, we have a new grandson so there has been a few road trips to go snuggle him, and this weekend I am going to spend some time with some of our other grandchildren, plus quilts to quilt and bind for customers before I go, so I knew I needed to decide what to do and do it early in the week. Sunday evening I dug through my batik stash and found some fabrics I liked, printed off a couple of patterns to try and decided with the limited pieces of fabric I would do the paper piecing pattern.

 I’m not a fan of actually doing paper piecing, even though I like the way the finished blocks look, there is just something about paper piecing that makes me feel like I’m wasting a lot of fabric. Which if you could see my fabric hoard you would tell me I should waste a little bit more 🤪 

I loved the way the block turned out and I was sad that I didn’t have more of these fabrics so I could have made a table runner or something. I decided I would wait and see how the week went and maybe dig out some other fabric and try the template pattern or the one using the tri rec rulers. I feel like I’ve just skimmed  through the first two challenges and maybe I could put a little more effort in this one. 

I found part of a layer cake that was left over from another project and using the templates cut out enough to make a nice little table runner. I got everything sewn together enough so I could lay it out and decide how I wanted it to look. Then I realized it was Friday night, I was leaving in the morning and I still hadn’t finished the original block. So I put aside the table runner project and quickly quilted the first block and put a binding on it, so at least I would have a finished project for the week. I will go back and finish the table runner next week! 

I am spoiled because I have owned a longarm quilting machine for 12 years. If you have never used one and done all your quilting on a sit down sewing machine, which is what I did for years, there is an unbelievable difference in how you can control the designs and how much faster you can quilt, especially when you are in a hurry!

 So when I sat down at my sewing machine last night  and started quilting my little block I had a complete mental block and just felt crabby that nothing looked the way I wanted, and how sloppy it looked. I was glad I had used a wild fabric on the back so I didn’t have to see the awful stitching. I stopped mid way through and just finished it off with stitch in the ditch and the thought that at some point I am going to pick all the sloppy seams out and fix them! But I was done and finished for the week and that was all that mattered. 

Then this morning the Project Quilting Facebook page had this posted and looking at my block I knew it had been posted just for my picky self 😂 

I don’t know why I like this block so much, I am usually not a block person, I don’t like measuring and squaring things up. I like to slash and hack fabric and sew it back together in random patterns, and prefer doing things without rules. But this little block is one I want to make more of! I will post the table runner when I get it done and also the re-quilted block, which I plan to use as a little coffee mug rug. The finished paper piecing block is 12x12 with the binding and border on.