strike that one off!

I love it when a plan comes together and gets completed all in one seating!  Today was a good day with my Potholder Pass2 project.  I'd had an idea for the last few days that I wanted to do free-form curved piecing for my potholders, so today I grabbed my fabric - Blush, by Basic Grey, and started slicing away.   The first potholder was made in curves around the centre focus fabric, the second one was made by using the off cuts from the first and then adding some border strips to make sure I had a large enough piece. Then I quilted them pretty densely, using 2 layers of heat proof batting.  Squared them up and bound them. Job done!  and another OPAM finish, wahoo!

If you're not familiar with this technique, you stack 2 pieces of fabric right sides up,

 and using your rotary cutter, you make a gentle sweeping arc - can be concave or convex, either works, (making sure you leave enough fabric at the edge so that you've got a good chunk of fabric to sew together.)

then you "shuffle" the pieces so that you sew together 1 top piece with the opposite bottom. 

Now the fun part - you sew them together, right sides matching, no pins required!  I have the most success when I sew with the convex piece on top, and the concave on the bottom, but do some experimenting for yourself.  Hold on to each piece with a separate hand (I hold the top piece in my left hand and the bottom in my right) and carefully ease them together at the needle. 

Try not to stretch the edges - gets easier with practise.  Don't worry about keeping a consistent 1/4" seam - sometimes it gets a little slimmer, but as long as you've got at least an 1/8" of each fabric, your seam will be okay.  I find using my 1/4" piecing foot, with the single hole, not a slot, gives the best results

You will find that the fabric will naturally want to fall to one side or the other.  Let it do what it wants - no fighting permitted!

Gently press the seam from the right side.

  Admire your lovely piece,

then stack them up and do it again!

Keep adding to your piece, in any direction, until its the size you want, square it up, and continue making more for a larger project, or quilt / embellish what you've made.

I love this technique - I find it very forgiving and very freeing.  You can slice them any which way you want, only caveat, don't get too abrupt with your curves - smooth flowing ones work best.  You can even do gentle S-curves.

Some other projects I've made using this technique - my just completed Winter Glory for the Winter Time Mini Quilt swap,

and my "All Dressed Up" finished last summer

Happy Quilting!