Under the Sea Swap

The Under the sea swap this summer was swap one of my favorites this year.

It was perfect timing with my pattern testing for The Tartan Kiwi.

 The pattern has lots of pieces, but comes together nicely.

Tartan Kiwi has wonderful patterns.

Here he is before quilting. A night photo.  Most of my quilting is done at night now or early morning before the sun comes up. So lots of night time photos.

I used my sulky top stitching thread for the quilting and tried to mimic seaweed.

Finally got an outside photo.

I made my partner a little sewing book to go with her mini quilt and filled it with some sewing goodies.

This one went all the way to Canada.  I actually took it there myself... sort of.  

I was on vacation and on my way to Toronto and mailed it while in Canada!

The person sending to me did a fantastic job!  I love the lobster!

Stay Tuned for more minis!

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Amy Butler Low Volume Mini Quilt Swap

Instagram has introduced me to some fabulous new fabric artists.  Amy Butler is one of them.  I was never really aware of her quilting fabrics till I started following other quilters on Instagram.  They were making some fabulous this with her fabrics and when the Amy Butler Low Volume swamp came up I added my name to the list.  I ordered myself a jelly roll of her Dream Weaver line and it came with the Ribbon Star pattern, which I shrunk down to a mini version for this swap.

The ribbon star pattern is meant to be a large quilt, The jelly roll had enough fabric to make the big quilt and a mini version as well.  The mini version got made first.  The large has been adding to my UFO pile.

I define low volume as not plain white, but not too colorful either. Mostly white, or off white with some pattern: that constitutes low volume for me.  I used my low volume scraps for the background and sashing.

The binding is a piece of fabric from another Amy Butler line, not sure which, it was given to me a long time ago and I didn't even realize it was Amy Butler till I joined this swap.

This one measured 22 x 22.  One of the bigger minis I have made.

This mini flew all the way to Washington State.

I received this mini in return.  

Stay tuned for more minis... 

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Black and White Mini Swap

The next swap I participated in this year was the Black and White Swap.

We had the option to add one color if our partner wished, but my partner wanted only black and white so I stuck with that.  After stalking her Instagram I saw she liked several black and white mushroom drawings, so I printed one off the internet and grabbed a black and white charm pack and got to work.

I cut out the mushrooms into sections to make my pattern pieces.

Satin stitching the mushrooms down.

After appliqueing the mushrooms I had a small 8 inch block.
To make it bigger so I added some black and white triangles and a two inch boarder.

For the quilting, I used my black thread to try to recreate some of the pen drawings in the original, then finished it up with white thread.  

This one was packaged up and set all the way around the world to Australia!

It took a while, but it made it in one piece!

The person sending to me picked a pattern straight from my mosaic.  It is perfect!

Stay tuned for more minis...

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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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