The Prayer Quilt (2)

I've hardly heard from anyone else who is working on this quilt, but I hope they're having as much fun coming up with things as I've been having!

In fact, I've been enjoying myself so much I'm having a very hard time feeling like I should stop -- though obviously if I keep going, some of the blocks will not be used for her quilt.

After my happy little fox and sloth blocks, I turned my attention in a different direction:

I've been watching these adorable snails pop up in my Instagram feed for ages -- and as soon as I saw this adorable pink fabric, I knew I wanted to make a snail with it.

Because I had to shrink the pattern slightly to make it fit in my requirements (and then it looks like I had room after all, as you'll see in a moment), my little snail wound up a little bit... wonkier than intended. But still cute!

The tail seems out of proportion with what I've seen on other snails, but I checked and double checked my pattern and it says I did it right... I wish the itty bitty triangle on the head had turned out the same size as the other (it should have, it was when I started) but I'm not undoing any of it. I say 'she' is cute and I'm good with it.

But yeah, look at that border I added at the tail end, I think I could have not shrunk any measurements and wound up okay.

After that, it was back to foundation paper piecing. And another block that turned out adorable, but was a pain to get there!

I'm the first to say, it's adorable. I love it, I really do. But I did not think I was going to make it through this pattern. If it had been a free pattern, I would have quit before I finished the second unit. But, I pushed through and I'm glad I did. The hardest part was deciding whether I wanted to use the floral pattern fabric for the body or the ears. She was initially going to be dots all over, but I learned with the fox that the dots are far enough apart they don't always show up, and I had two votes for the patterned body. They were right.

Again, since I shrunk the pattern to ensure all of the animal would fit in the block, I had to add a little bit of a border.

Much of this border will be lost when I add the sash, but I'm loving the way it really pops. And I will have some room to add a name or other message if I choose to do so. I've still got to figure out a way to do that...

So, here are my four blocks (so far) together.

I'm thinking the fox looks lonely in orange, so I might make another with more orange/red tones to see if that should swap in for one of them (unfortunately, probably the snail). I might also just wait until I see what everyone else has done. And I might just keep picking away at free patterns until I have dozens of these blocks and make something for myself! (Or my kid!)

I'm having a blast. And it lets me ignore basting on that other quilt shown above... even though I really need to swap back to it tomorrow. I've got the back made and I think I know how I'm quilting (just need to decide on soft gray thread vs barely pink). And then baste it. Ugh.