Friday Night Batik Patchwork

I got a lot done on this scrappy batik 16-patch tonight. I worked until almost 6:30 tonight, which is odd for a Friday night. It’s a pretty busy time. So I didn’t have a lot of time.

But I did get 38 of these blocks half way completed. This is the first 19 blocks and their duplicates. I will pin the center seam on the two block halves tomorrow and get them sewn together.

I had a two hour video call first thing this morning so I grabbed the block strips that I had cut last night and grabbed my pins and got these all pinned as I sat in that meeting.

Tonight I sat down at my Bernina with these stacks and sewed them all with chain piecing. Then I finger pressed each block half open. I’m a big fan of finger pressing these days! It went really fast.

Then I cut the remaining 17 strip sets into pieces. I got really brave and stacked up five sets and cut them all at once. This saves so much time!!! I had to take a picture of this because it was so pretty! This is the set of five strips that I cut at one time.

I think four strips is a good number for me though. At least for now. But I’ll keep pushing to improve.

Here’s the cut up strips. The piles contain duplicate blocks.

Then… I decided to sew the little left over scrap strips together into panels that I can sew into a pouch. I alternated the seams because I just didn’t want to match all those corners, and I wanted these to look casual and easy.

Here’s what one of these panels looks like before trimming it up.

I might combine these in a pouch or bucket with some indigo batik I have on hand.

This weekend I hope to make some good progress on sewing my blue 16 patch quilt top together. It looks like we may actually get some snow on Sunday. Even just an inch of snow can shut Portland down for days. I don’t think this will be one of those storms.