Pearadise

Ever though we got 6" of snow yesterday, it was time to bring out the Spring fabrics and get to work on some hot pads.  I made a baby quilt out of this medley of prints and I love how cheery they are.  The fabrics around the border came in 2- 1/5"  width cuts.  ALL fabric should always be washed before one starts sewing with it, RIGHT?.  Not these strips!  They raveled like crazy and ended up shrinking a bit.  The patterned called for a 6 - 1/2" square in the center.  If I started out with a 6" square, that would compensate for the rectangles on the outer border not being 2 1/2" long..  Unfortunately I had already started sewing the inner green border onto some of the squares before I realized this.  It's a good thing that I did a couple of test pads to make sure everything was going to come out O.K.  Those pads, I ended up cutting down the inner green border to compensate.  On the rest, I simply made the inner square smaller.  I now have 9 new hot pads and am thinking about other designs that would use this fabric to it's best advantage.