Quiet Play Swap - Circle of Love

I'm still catching up on posting last years mini quilts.  This next one was done for a swap called Quiet Play.  This swap used patterns exclusively by Kristi of Quiet Play.  There were two versions of this swap.  You could be in the group that choose any of her patterns, or you could be in the group that specifically used her Circle of Love Pattern. I joined the Circle of Love group.

My partner said pretty much anything goes, so I went with my favorite color combo: Rainbow. 

The first quarter went together pretty smooth....

Followed by the other three... 

The longest part was trying to decide how to quilt it.  It sat on the sewing machine for a couple days while I brain stormed.

I ended up quilting wavy lines branching out from the center.

I finished it off with a black binding to tie all the colors together.

This mini is now happily residing in Texas.

And this is the quilt I received from my partner.

=^..^=

Project Quilting Season 8 - Week 1

This is the eighth year for project quilting and the challenge theme for this week, "8 is Great", was perfect.

I was inspired to make an 8 pointed Lonestar. I designed the layout in EQ7 and added 8 New York Beauty blocks and 8 distorted New York Beauty blocks.  

The Lonestar was the fastest part to put together.  I used strip piecing and it went together in a couple hours.  

I used all my brightest rainbow batiks! The next row of New York Beauties was also pretty quick, had them done in one night.  The last row of distorted New York Beauties took the longest with all those pieces in the outer ring.  The end of my week had me up late every night in order to finish by the deadline, but it was definitely worth it.

No time for fancy quilting on this one.  Just stitch in the ditch for now around the major sections. Maybe later I will go back and put in some free motion in the stars.  But this week didn't allow for any fancy free work.

This one measures approximately 38.5 inches square. Started and finished in one week in Lake City, SC.  It's my first finish for the year and my new favorite quilt!

Check out all the entries Here and vote for your 10 favorite!

=^..^=

Bonnie and Camille Barn Quilt Mini Swap

This next swap was a quick one.  I only had to make one block using either Bonnie and Camille fabrics or Fig Tree Quilt fabrics and then quilt it and bind it. You could choose from 12 inch or 6 inch block.

I choose the Bonnie and Camille 6 inch block.  I used one of the star patterns from my partner's mosaic and recreated the design in EQ7 to the right size and turned it into a paper piecing pattern.

I used my mini charm pack to create a scrappy version of the block.

Quilting such a small quilt was fun and quick and good practice for my curves.

I didn't have any Bonnie and Camille yardage that matched for a binding, so I had to use some quilters candy yellow from Connecting Threads.  It matched perfectly.

This little mini flew all the way to Indiana.

The person who had me also took a pattern from my mosaic and sent me this wonderful mini mini.

Stay tuned for more minis!

=^..^=

Over the Rainbow Mini Quilt Swap

For my Over the Rainbow Mini Quilt swap I decided to make a rainbow of butterflies.

I can't get enough of these cute little butterflies.  They are a free pattern from LillyElla

They finish at 5 inches so they only need small pieces of fabric to complete.

I used my left over Blue Berry Park fabric.  I had just enough to get all the colors of the rainbow.

I added some sashing and corner stones and viola...

A lovely array of rainbow butterflies that flew all the way to Washington State.

This one measures about 20 x 20 inches.

The partner who sent to me noticed my love for paper pieced butterflies and sent  me this fabulous mini all the way from New Zealand. I have it hanging on my cubical at work. I love it!

I have a few more mini's to show so stay tuned!

=^..^=

Eerie Nights Blog Hop

Welcome to the Eerie Nights blog hop!

  

I love being part of the Halloween hop each year.  This year it was set up by Marian of Seams to be Sew  and is being co-hosted by Amy of  Sew Incredibly Crazy.

This year has been the year of making mini quilts for me and in following that theme I have made a mini quilt for Halloween.  This quilt was inspired by the Halloween Mini craft swap I joined on Instagram.  For my project I choose to create a mini wall hanging using the Midnight Bite pattern from Lilly Ella's World.

My partner posted the bat pattern in her idea mosaic on instagram.  I had seen the pattern floating around the web myself and had been dying to try it out, so I went ahead and got the pattern. It went together nicely.

I added a two inch gray border border and decided to add some iron on studs to the wing joints.

Close up of the wing with some dark gray studs.

 For the eyes I used some green iron on crystal  gems.  They shine eerily in the right lighting.
I added some purple piping in the binding and then sent it on its way. He is now spending his days hanging around in Texas.

In return my partner sent me this fancy witch hat decorated with sparkly purple spiders. And quilted with silver thread. It is hard to see the quilting in the photo but it is quilted spider webs!  It is fabulous! It is super cool and even though I didn't make it, I had to show it off!

  Make sure you check out the other swappers today as well:

October 28th

Pink Doxies

Quilted Delights - Me

Stitches Quilting

MaryMack's Blog

Sew Incredibly Crazy

=^..^=

Star Block Mini Quilt Swap

I started out my Star Block Mini Quilt swap with this Supernova Star using left over Amy Butler fabrics.  But then my original partner dropped out so I had to change gears. One reason is because my Amy Butler fabrics were temporarily misplaced which meant I couldn't finish my original Supernova star the way I wanted. I had moved the fabrics  to a safe place when I was rearranging my sewing room so they wouldn't get lost. Unfortunately, my brain couldn't reminded me where that safe place was. I do believe it was for the best though because my new partner had a different taste in patterns. I did eventually find my other fabrics, they were in my red basket folded neatly inside another project I wanted to keep safe .

For my new partner I decided to use left over scraps of Blueberry park fabrics and create the Morning Star pattern. 

Lots of pressed open seams for this one.

Viola!  A lovely morning star.

This one was hard to let go, but it landed happily in its new home in PA.

This fancy half Lonestar is what I received!

Stayed tuned for more minis!

=^..^=

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!

=^..^=

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... 

=^..^=

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...

=^..^=