Project Quilting 17.6: A Happy Handful

Welcome to my final Project Quilting challenge for 2026, A Happy Handful.  I knew I needed to do a small project for this week, and the theme did a good job of not tempting me to go big.

Pretzel is yet another potholder!  You can never have too many, and it's fun to experiment with different sizes and techniques.  This week I debated with myself over doing a traditional binding or brown-bagging it, and I'm glad that the traditional binding won.  It's the right finish for this particular project.

One of the things on my personal Project Quilting challenge list for this year was to use a block from the 100 Paper Pieced Quilt Blocks book I found in my sewing room (and don't remember buying, oops).  I had the idea for the general layout and quilt plan ready to go, but couldn't decide on which block to use.  So I went to my go-to of bugging my family!  My husband was the first person I saw and I asked him to flip through the book and tell me what jumped out at him.  As soon as he said "pretzel" my mind went directly to this scrap of leftover brown and white fabric.  It was close, but I had just enough.

I wanted a solid but not white background, and my mind went to the leftover solids from my Fado Road quilt.  So this little potholder is made entirely from two different quilt projects.  The back, however, is a hail mary.  I needed something that would look good with my dark blue binding and found this blue print that never seems to match anything.  It was about 3 inches wider and taller than my finished front, making it the perfect size.

If you look closely, you can see that I outlined the pretzel in brown using my free-motion foot, then outlined the borders before doing straight lines to the edges in the larger border.  Inside is one layer of Insul-Brite and one layer of regular cotton batting - no chance of any burns here!

Once again, there are no leader and ender blocks.  The center is all paper pieced, and I used a Farm Fresh block when I was adding the borders.  I'm still hoping to finish the Space Parade quilt by the end of summer!  I'm linking up my successful finish at the Project Quilting linky party, then it's time to finish a big quilt so I can start my Peter Pan quilt.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope to see you again before the start of next season!