Quilting Retreat Challenge...who's up for it?

 At the last retreat, we played games using fat quarters and 5" sq. We issued a challenge about the using the 5" sq. in a project before the next retreat. Well, it's coming up in a few weeks, and guess who hadn't done anything with hers....yea...so I got them out the other day and pondered. I only had 13, so it wasn't going to make anything too large.

 I decided to make an even square as I should be able to think up something to do with a square. So I cut 3 more 5" sq. (don't worry, it's allowed!). Should I lay them out evenly or unevenly?

 I decided on this and sewed them together.

 I thought about lots of ways (ok, a few different ways) that I could cut the square to make something else and decided to crosscut it on the diagonal. There were only a few ways I could lay it out after cutting and this is one of them. At this point I'm thinking that it will be a table topper.

 Then I realized that I could make two smaller squares instead of one large sq. so I played with that for a bit. You can see in the first pairings, the yellow and the purple corners wouldn't have been pieced. So I switched them around.

 That's better.

 Here are both of the squares laid out.

  I thought about sewing them together to make a rectangle, but then what did I really have? It was sort of a genius plan to have two squares anyway because I could have a front and a back, both pieced. So I got a piece of cotton batting and and sandwiched them together, with the front and back right sides together on top of the batting. I left an opening to turn it and flipped it right sides out.

 After pressing and closing the opening, I decided to do some simple quilting to hold all the layers together.

 I also top-stitched around the edge. Now it's 12" mat to set hot dishes on or whatever you want it to be. Is it the most beautiful thing I've ever sewn? No.

But it's a great reminder of the retreat and quilting fun! This time, we are playing with 2 1/2" x 6 1/2" rectangles. Should be interesting!