SYS 2015 - Pixel quilt: My project and few extra tips

At the beginning of the month Susan shared an amazing tutorial for a pixel bag to stretch your skills in stitching small squares :).
You can find the tutorial on the SYS2015 page!

And my project status is... not completed :( a visitor in our home means no sewing time... but I completed the blocks and outside of the bag about a month ago so I can share that with you with few extra tips! ;)

Bub and Bob from Bubble Bobble arcade game! CLICK HERE to get my pattern for them! :)
So now let's get down to the EXTRA TIPS. My situation was this: I finished the main blocks (square as above) and to make the bag I needed the extra 3 columns on the sides and the extra 3 rows on the bottom (if you checked the tutorial you know what I am talking about). Now, I didn't want the black background to be scrappy as above, so I told myself: what is the purpose of cutting 216 squares of the same black fabric and 144 of the same red fabric only to put them back together??!?!? So my idea was simple... don't cut them ;) I wanted to keep the same look of the rest of the bag so I cut the biggest section for each color and I used the same sewing-on-paper technique as before, but with fewer pieces of fabric!

Below you can see how it looks when I stitched the long vertical seam on both pieces.

Now to sew the other seam, if you want the left and right side to "nest" you cannot get it just by pressing because they come from the same piece of fabric. To solve that issue, you can snip the piece from the fold to the seam (make sure not to cut through the seam line). And that's it! You can sew them following the directions in the tutorial and you will get the additional pieces with pixellated look without the need to cut 360 small squares! 

A fair warning: this technique works only for big sections filled with the same color and same fabric. Otherwise cutting sections of different sizes would take more time than cutting many squares of the same size! --

And what are YOU making? Let's get the party started!!

Remember that in this link party only projects belonging to the SYS2015 series should be added 

(I reserve the right to delete any non compliant link). 

This link party will be open all year long and you can add as many finished projects as you want! 

The same link party will be shown on the SYS2015 page.

Each link will give you a chance to win one of the monthly prizes.

For this month in order to be eligible for prizes, you are asked to make a pixel project of any size and any design!

For the first entry, you can enter the piece in the stage of a finished top piece (so just with all your squares assembled). For a second entry, you can enter a completed object: it can be a bag (as suggested in the tutorial) or any other object. For example you can use Janeen's tutorial to turn your pixel project into a pillow, or the tutorial I suggested to turn it into a fabric box!). 

Get creative and have fun!!

You can still link up blocks and projects from the Foundation Paper Piecing, Quilting and Crochet tutorials!!

For rules about what will be accepted in those cases, please refer to this previous post (Tutorial 1), this other post (Tutorial 2) and this other post (Tutorial 3).

This month the prize is offered by me and it is...

Mystery! Surprise ;)

It will be something related to crafts that we did or we will do in the series. 

Things that the winner could put to good use!! 

I will draw a winner (using random.org) on June 3rd between all the new entries in the link party. 

International participants are welcome!!

An InLinkz Link-up