I decided I might as well use the fabric to practice some techniques that either I am not very good at or had never even tried before. Out came the Accuquilt Go! and the 1.5" strip cutter. I cut three of the fat 1/8ths into strips and then sewed together the strips in a light/dark/light sequence. After careful pressing I checked the width at several place down the strips and they remained 3.5" all the way down.
Next out with the rotary cutter to subcut those strips into squares. A few minutes later and I had lots of lovely 3.5" squares.
Then onto free motion quilting, I'm always nervous before attempting to FMQ but this time I just put the fabric under the machine and went for it!
Because I hadn't invested a lot of time and effort or my favourite fabric into this project I was a lot more willing to tolerate things going wrong which meant I was a lot more relaxed about the whole process and less things did go wrong. It has reminded me of the value of just playing and practicing with fabric and the sewing machine without having any real expectations of the end product and somehow I managed to end up with a lovely little table topper.