May the Fourth Mini Quilt Swap

Around May of this year I joined the May the 4th Swap.  I couldn't resist that one!

My partner loves BB-8 and I found this very coo and free paper piecing patter at the  Fandom In Stitches blog and started on it right away.

I added my favorite paper pieced star pattern to the mix and thought I had it finished with only four stars.  When I was in the process of basting it, I realized I didn't like the look of just four.  So I took the borders off and added four more stars.

BB-8 surrounded in stars!  This pattern was super fun and super cute!  This one flew all the way to Crystal Lake, IL.  

Check out the mini I received.  It is fantastic! All the way from Australia from Kristi of Quiet Play. Love her patterns!

Stay tuned for more mini's!

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Big Stitch Swap

Next on my swap list this year was the Big Stitch Swap.  For this swap you could make a pouch, a mini quilt, or pretty much anything your partner wanted as long as it had a good amount of hand stitching on it.  My partner opted for a mini quilt and mentioned she enjoyed the ocean, so I made her a cute hand stitched mini light house quilt.

Hand embroidery mixed with some machine quilting.

I may need to make myself one of these!  I love how it turned out.

I edged the stitches with crayon to give it a little extra color.

 These little birds are one of my favorite sections!

I received a lovely hand stitched pouch for this swap.

Stay tuned for more mini quilts!

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Disney Mini Quilt Swap

 Next up in my mini swap calendar was the Disney Mini Quilt Swap.  For this one you told your partner some of your favorite Disney movies and they would take it from there.

My partner chose Beauty and the Beast.

I decided to do a Belle silhouette surrounded by roses.
I found this silhouette on the internet and increased it to the size I needed. 

 For the roses I used Rosie's Rose paper pieced pattern.
It took me about an hour to finish each rose, but it was well worth it!  I made 8 roses.

 I decided to go with a yellow silhouette to match Belle's dress in the movie.

And here she is all finished!  I love all those roses!
This one was hard to ship out, but it happily landed in its new home in Texas.  

This is the quilt I received. I picked Mary Poppins as one of my favorite Disney movies so my partner made this.  I like the idea, but I was disappointed that there was no quilting on it. I understand not everyone who plays along is at the same skill level as others, but I did expect a little quilting effort so I was a little dis heartened when they didn't even try to quilt it.
I also didn't know who it was from at first.  In this swap I didn't send to the same person who sent to me and there was no card in the box, no name on the quilt and the return address was not from anyone in the swap.  No one had even posted a photo of it on Instagram, which is mandatory for the swaps. After some investigating help from the swap mama, we finally found out who it was from and the person who made it had someone else mail it.

Stay tuned for more minis!

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Fancy Friends Mini Quilt Swap

I love Elizabeth Hartman's animal patterns.  I made her Fancy Fox Quilt for a good friend of mine and even cut out some fabrics to make one for myself, so when a spot opened in the Fancy Friends Mini quilt swap I jumped right in.

One of the animals my partner said she liked was the fox, so I decided to shrink the pattern and make a bunch of mini foxes.  My first attempt above turned out a little wonky because I added the seam allowances in my math.  My second attempt below turned out perfect.

 Half size  ~  Wonky size.

 Then I decided to go even smaller. Don't you just love that tiny pink fox!

Working on a layout.  I ended up not using the four blue ones, they just didn't fit. 

Each fox got quilted in the ditch and 1/2 inch away.

In between the foxes I did some meandering swirls. 

It is the perfect size for a table topper.  It also makes a great bird bath cover.  ;)

These foxes made it all the way to Denmark!

This is the lovely I received in return! A very large Hazel Hedgehog.
She is fancy with her glasses and 3D butterflied!

Stay tuned for more Minis!

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Blue Berry Park Mini Swap

Fabric selection for my next swap was super easy!  We had to use the Blueberry Park line by Karen Lewis.  My partner mentioned she loved the Triple Goosed pattern by Jeli Quilts, so that is what the pattern I went with.

I bought the two charm packs, one cool and one warm and got enough colors to do a full rainbow of flying geese.

 Playing Around with the outer pieces.

The would look great in this layout as well!

It is always hard to pick a quilting design.  My mini sat just like this for a couple days while I deliberated.

 I ended up doing half feathers and wavy lines that followed the direction of the geese.

I even used my left over scraps to make a scrappy binding.

This one flew all the way to Maine to find its new home.

This is the mini I received.  I was not expecting something so fabulous!
She really did a fantastic job on this one. It is one of my favorites!

Stay tuned for more minis!

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Rainbow Mini Swap - Round 2

The next swap I mailed out this year was my Rainbow Round 2 Mini.
I didn't participate in round one because it happened before I started swapping minis on Instagram.
But I was definitely happy to be a part of round 2.

I found a perfect quilt online, but was unable to find the actual pattern, so I recreated it in EQ7.
I was also able to make it the right size for the swap.

I pulled rainbow colors from my scrap bins and did some paper piecing to get my points perfect.

I was really excited how the colors were coming together and started sewing the rows together. When I got to the point pictured above I realized I forgot to add the white corners to each of the colored nine patches to give the quilt it's illusion of circles.

Instead of taking everything apart I decided to skip the white corner pieces and quilted it up the way it was.

The finished Rainbow mini.

And this is the mini I received from my partner.

A fun unique take on the theme.

Stay tuned for more minis.

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Tula JayBird Mini

This was a fun swap.  You had to use Tula Pink Fabrics as your main fabrics along with any Jaybird Mini Quilt Pattern.  

With so many combinations available it was hard to choose, but after much deliberation I chose an Eden Charm pack and the Tiny Dancer pattern. I bought the Mini Hex N More ruler to go with it, which I ended up using for my skinny mini swap as well.

Working on a layout.

I ended up with my lone yellow pinwheel in the center,
followed by the greens, purples, and then reds.

All quilted up and ready to ship out. 

Stay tuned for more minis!

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Skinny Mini - Quilt Swap

Time for a blog update!  My last post was at the beginning of February and I have lots of mini quilts to show you!  Today I will start with my Skinny Mini.

This was the second mini quilt swap I mailed out.  It was called Skinny Mini and the quilt had to be less than 8 inches wide and at least 20 inches long.  

While I was working with Jaybird Quilt's mini Hex N More ruler for another mini swap, inspiration struck for this optical illusion cubed quilt.

I pulled all the colors from my scrap bin.  Love my wonder clips!
They kept everything organized for me.

 And worked mostly at night to whip  this one up.

Here is the real sewing room during production.  I have several projects going at once.  I do believe I suffer from quilters ADD.  I had to set up another flannel board for my layout process since my regular design wall was preoccupied with a regular size quilt.

Here she is all finished!  Some of the blocks didn't contrast as much as I expected and  didn't  give the 3-D pop I was looking for.  To fix that I ended up coloring over them with a crayon to get the shade I needed.

Unfortunately my partner never sent me a return quilt.  :(  

I was a little bummed about that, but have now become more picky with the swaps I join.  There are several Swap mama's who run a tight ship.  If you don't participate and show updates they boot you out.  That may seem harsh to some, but I when I join these swaps I always get a good partner.

Stay tuned for more mini updates!

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Project Quilting Week Three: All About That Thread

The theme for week three of Project Quilting is "All About that Thread".

I decided to go small this week after my huge bed size quilt last week.  

It made for a more relaxing week and I still got to participate even though I spent three days at the hospital with my son while he had his appendix removed.  We came home Saturday afternoon and I finished up my project while my son recovered on the couch.  He is recovering well thank goodness, which gave me time to finish up this mini quilt.

The Unicorn pattern is from www.robynieland.com.
I first saw it on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/crookedwhimsy/) and wanted to make one of my very own. I used a black background so I could show off some thread work for this weeks theme.

It measures 21 x 21 inches.

I used all brands of thread: Aurifil, Gutermann, Sulky, and Connecting Threads.

It was fun to paint my background with thread.  

My son said it looked like a cool drawing instead of quilting.

Check out all the fabulous entries and vote for your favorite here:
 http://www.persimondreams.blogspot.ca/2016/02/thread-challengetime-to-vote.html

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Project Quilting 7 Week Two: Seasons

What a week!  Every spare minute was spent at the machine. Early mornings, late evenings, during lunch breaks and into the wee hours of the morning... all to complete this quilt from start to finish in just one week !

Every time I close my eyes now I see snowflake parts.

This is for week two of Project Quilting 7.

The theme this week was "Seasons"

I opted to do one season.  

Autumn is my favorite season, but I was in the mood for something wintry, and wanted to work in blues.  While perusing the internet for inspiration ideas, I came across this pattern from Quilter Maker Magazine and knew I wanted to have one of my very own.

I couldn't resit making the whole quilt.

I was originally going to make one snowflake and make a table topper,
but I just kept piecing snowflakes like a mad woman!

This beauty measures 67 x 77.

I am in love with it.

I am going to call it  "Snow and Ice"

I'm definitely going to go smaller next week.  It was a huge challenge to get this one done in a week.  And I missed being able to stop and stare and take in the progress as I went.  There just wasn't time for staring.  If that sewing machine wasn't humming along I was getting behind.

When I first started quilting years ago I wanted to have a finished product ASAP! but now I notice I spend more time stopping and admiring the project as it develops.  I really do enjoy the whole quilting process from start to finish.

Make sure you check out all the other fabulous "Seasons" quilts.  Lots of great work went on this week,  You can vote for 6 of your favorites HERE.

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