Boot Quiltin' Boogie

 Today was my first day back in my shed to sew since we had that cold spell of weather.  As usual, I spent more than my usual amount of time using my seam ripper.  Why is it that I make more mistakes when I haven't been at my machine for awhile?  I did get something accomplished, though.

I used the 2-inch boot patterns from this year's Home on the Range BOM (go to Sundrop Designs for the patterns) to make fusible appliques for one of last month's 7" sample Bear's Paw blocks.  (The entire time I was working, I had Billy Ray Cyrus's old "Boot Scootin' Boogie" song playing in my head.)  At the 2" size, I didn't try to put the little pull tabs on the boots, but they turned out looking like cowboy boots anyway.

I saved the little paper backings from the fusible web and glued them to another sample block using washable glue.  It's best to put the glue on the dull paper side, not the shiny plastic film side.  But if you get it wrong like I did a few times, don't panic.  I was able to scrape off the plastic film that stuck to my block using my thumbnail as a scraper.  After layering the backing, batting and block for a quilt-as-you-go method, I glued the little paper boots in place then stitched around them using a specialty stitch on my machine.  This particular stitch pattern was 3 stitches forward, 1 stitch back.  It has kind of a rope-like appearance on a tiny scale.  Once the stitching was done, I removed the paper.

Here's what the backing side looks like.  The batting only requires quilting every 10 inches, so these four tiny boots will be enough quilting for this 7-inch block.