Even my squirrels are procrastinating these days

Though even my tangents are starting to develop tangents, I think.

I did get a few more Jacks blocks sewn for the RSC.  Since I'm cutting out red squares and triangles for Sand Castles 2 anyway, it's easy to just cut a few extra and make another Jacks.

I really need to get the Jacks bin down and count my blocks, though.  Seems like I decided long ago that I had enough blocks, but here I am still making them...

While I was scrumbling around in my fabric looking for RSC candidates, I came across the bacon fabric I got for the back of my dad's quilt.

 It just hooted and waved at me until I agreed to make a cake stand with it.  Who can argue with bacon?

My other sewing time pretty much went to sewing more 4-patches for Sand Castles 2,

and I've started string piecing the corner triangles for the blocks, figuring it will be less onerous a task if I get a head start on it.  (My method is here.)

In my typical mingy fashion, when I have strips that are too short, I just sew them together to make a longer string.

And then this squirrel came out of nowhere and I ended up watching a metric butt-ton of rulerwork quilting videos.  I have a bunch of quilts that I want to get quilted where working with a ruler would be perfect. (Especially as wobbly as my free-motion non-skills are...)  Had to give it a try!

I was smart enough to keep it small scale.  I cut two 10" squares of scrap fabric and backed them with squares of batting.

My first experiment was on this fabric where the quilting wouldn't show.  (Am I not wise in the ways of quilting?)  I didn't mark anything, just practiced sewing along the edge of the ruler.

For side two, I actually made some marks to keep me in line.  (That's what those little flashes of orange are - a washable marker)

You can see the quilting better from the back sides where I'm marking darts.

And ta-da!  For my practice piece, I actually made something useful!  A microwave bowl cozy, which is something that I'd been coveting all along!

And since it was a practice piece, I won't even mind if I spill gravy all over it!

Linking with SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and with Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!  I'm late to the parties as usual, but come see the fun!