another way to use a quilt block

JK's friend BR is really into snails, which utterly confuses her parents. It's really hilarious. But they humored her at her birthday last week (she turned 5). They had a garden themed birthday party on Saturday and even gave her live snails as a pet for her gift.

A couple of nights before her party, I was randomly surfing quilting blogs and came across a snail quilt block. Stop. The. Presses. I am making this quilt block for BR and putting it on a tote bag for her gift. Now. I didn't buy the pattern, but eye-balled it, and this is how it ended up:

The snail itself is 6x8 inches. If I were to make this again, I would start with an 8-inch colored square instead of 6 to give more room for the seam allowances. The body started at 3 inches wide. The corner squares started at 2 inches, and then were sewn on the diagonal and the excess trimmed off. The smaller size worked great this time because BR is a tiny girl.

   

The block isn't quilted at all, but there is interfacing behind it. I used this tutorial from Simply Notable for the bag itself. It's a good sized bag for a small child for library books and carrying random toys around. I also experimented a little bit with the handles - I originally cut the strips at 2 1/2 inches wide like usual, and then folded them shut like bias tape. My addition was that I tucked a 1-inch wide strip of low-loft quilt batting into the fold before I sewed the strip shut. I like how that turned out - makes it softer to put over your shoulder! Planning to use that again with future bags.