Project Quilting  10.3  Bigger Than a Breadbox

This week’s Project Quilting challenge is size related.  It has to be ‘bigger than a breadbox’.  Which seems a little weird for a quilting project, amiright?  It turns out that the project doesn’t have to be 3D, it just has to be bigger than the footprint of a breadbox.  Which is about 8 X 16 inches. Who knew?  I haven't seen a breadbox since the last time I visited my grandparent's house.

I have to admit that I spent a few days kicking this one around in my head.  A tablerunner would fit the bill, but I started a tablerunner for the last challenge, and it didn’t work out well.  Actually, the tablerunner turned out fine; I just didn’t get it finished in time to submit it.  But I did finish it!  Yay!

Table runner that didn't get finished in time to enter into the Red/White/Blue Challenge

For this week, I first thought that I would make a fabric covered bin for my new sewing room.  Oh, I guess that I didn’t mention that yet – I have a new sewing room!  It’s a fairly long, convoluted story, that I don’t have time to get into right now, but I promise that I will post about it once it is presentable and I can take pictures. Right now, it is still in flux.  TL;DR - it used to be our family room. 

I did some digging around on the web for patterns or tutorials for fabric bins and realized that it wasn’t going to work. The fabric bins that I found were too small, or they were round. For my purposes, I wanted something like a box, not a basket.  I could have modified the instructions to make a bigger one.  But if I made something that met the size requirement for the challenge, it would be too big for the place that I wanted to use it.  So that idea went to the back burner for now.

I’ve been thinking that I needed a rug for the powder room that is adjacent to my new sewing room.  I have been seeing jelly roll rugs everywhere. Pinterest is full of them; there are tutorials online and they just seem to be the latest trend.  I had bought the pattern and a roll of the batting that is used to make them awhile ago.  But at the time that I bought the batting roll, I hadn’t read the pattern yet.  It turns out that the pattern calls for two rolls, not one…  oops.  I hadn’t gotten around to buying another roll, so it just kinda sat there.  Until now, that is!  I realized that I could use just half of a jelly roll and the one batting roll to make a smaller rug that would fit perfectly in the powder room.  Instead of an actual jelly roll, I used some of the leftover fabric from the new curtains that I made for the powder room and added some accent colors from my stash.  Voila – two birds with one stone! ^.^

My half jelly roll rug!  Approx 30" x 24"