FMQ practise and something different

Again got something done - I might get so used to it that I can't go back to work - do you think ACC covers you for inability to work due to quilting addiction?

Yesterday I practiced my FMQ following Leah's post last Wednesday. I have done stippling in most of my quilts, but it was nice to go back to basics, and she explained it really well. My main problem is that I need to slow down :-) I got a bit bored by just meandering, so I added a few other bops and bits I had wanted to practise:

My circles are a lot rounder when I slow down :-) I like koru (curley whirleys), and towards the left third I played around with squares and the like, I am thinking about using them in the background of the dino quilt. My quilting shapes get quite small when I am not careful, so I will do some more practise :-). Left bottom I had a play with leaves, there is a big Black Tarorright outside my sewing room window, it sways in the breeze and at night sometimes gives me a fright when I see it move! Bottom left hand corner is supposed to be a Queenpalm frond, heaps of them at our place :-)

Now to the 'different' bit: Last night both DH and I agreed that we needed some sort of footstools to go with our new sofa. Research on Trademe brought nothing exciting, so I decided I would try to make some, check these out:

I followed the pattern for "Bat Wings" from Jinny Beeyer's Patchwork Puzzle Balls. Basically you take 12 pentagons (2 each from 6 different fabrics) and sew them together. Her balls are juggling size, so I enlarged my pentagons to a base of 7 1/2" for the ball on the top picture and 9 1/2" for the one at the bottom. I used fabrics I had already at home, leftover curtain material, some remnants I had bought to make a table cloth and assorted fabrics out of my stash - as our curtains and floors are charcoal and sofa and chairs are black I stuck to this colour scheme. Using a 1/2 seam allowance I joined 5 different pentagons clockwise to the 5 sides of another pentagon (e.g. the stripy one in the forground here). Then you stitch up one side of two pentagons (e.g. the grey one and the one with the black flowers). You end up with a bowl like shape with peaks. Do the same with the remaining 6 pentagons. To not have same fabrics touch, you use the fabrics in the same order but this time anticlockwise (I mucked that up somehow in the second ball but doesn't matter in this colour scheme - I would have changed it if it were brights). Sew the two bowl shapes together, taking care to have a peak join to one of the valleys (otherwise you end up unpicking like I did - twice - on the first ball...). You can either leave one seam open to stuff it, instead I inserted a zip into it (I used zips I took out of an old first aid kit :-)). I stuffed mine with styrofoam packing chips which I had bought at Kleenpak for my outdoor bean bags which ripped after only one summer... Good use for them now! Voila, here are my footstools that cost me basically nothing except a couple of hours of fun. (PS: Quite a hoot that they are labeled small projects, probably the biggest things I have sewn in years!)

Back to more tesselating tomorrow... I plan to QAYG this quilt, and with 2 of 4 sections (almost) completed I have started thinking about batting. Cotton? What would bamboo batting be like? I plan to mainly use this as a cover, not so much to sleep under, so no wool, and following Caroline's advice (the Powerquilter) I have been thinking about going away from polyester. Any advice?