Mini Quilts - Mega Fun Swap

I came a cross a mini-quilt swap last month and just had to join in.  Now that my partner has received her darling mini quilt I can share some of images from the construction.  This swap was hosted by The Sewing Loft.  The majority of the communication was over on Flickr, which wasn't new for me.  I've participated in several mug rug swaps (mostly through Facebook and email) and even some charm square swaps.

This swap was designed so your partner doesn't know who you are.  Meaning I got a short description from my partner about the things she liked.  Wendy had some great input that pointed me in the direction of yellow and springtime.  I had this single charm pack from Kate Spain that just begged to become something that said springtime.  I hadn't used my Sidekick ruler yet, either.  Time to put these things together!

I played with the layout a little until it did something I liked.  It took me a couple tries.

I carefully pieced the rows together.  I was worried all that careful layout work would be ruined if I wasn't very precise.  These points may look pretty good, but they aren't perfect.  Not too bad for my first time with the ruler, though.

This quilt needed to be a mini quilt, so I kept the borders narrow.  I wanted the triangles to have some room to breath, but not to swim on the background.

The backing I picked wasn't quite big enough, so I did some improv piecing to make the backing.  I really like this one.  It brings the colors from the front to the back and did what it was intended - make the backing big enough.

I decided that I wanted to long arm quilt this.  I could have done the quilting on the domestic, but I thought I could really do better work with the long arm.  In my opinion my free-motion quilting isn't bad, but my long arm quilting is better.

I wanted to use a piece of the Quilter's Dream Green for this quilt since it is a mini, but the pieces I had leftover from Soul Stealer weren't quilt big enough so I used a piece of cotton batting.  I basted the quilt top down and walked back and forth for a little while until I settled on flowers as a motif.  This really brought this quilt from sprint/summer back to spring.  The colors worked either way, but the flowers say spring to me.

I did some fine lines for a border of sorts.  That wasn't easy to fit into that narrow border but I like the effect.

This quilt doesn't mind if you look at the back.

I had trouble finding a suitable binding for this quilt.  I took tiny little triangles to the fabric store to find this fun dotty print.

After I did that dense quilting around the borders, I realized there was no way I could get a hand-finished binding that wouldn't kill my fingers.  I decided to go for the machine-finished binding and was pleasantly surprised when it didn't suck.  I'm getting better at machine-finished binding, I guess.

Pretty much a total quilt label fail on this one.  No imagination, nothing. At least it says something and identifies the maker and where it was made.

I packed the quilt, along with some goodies for my partner. This little Giving Bunny went along, too.  I love these little guys.  They are so happy to take long trips with quilts.  To be fair I like long trips with quilts, too.

NC Maker Faire

Over the weekend, we traveled to Raleigh, North Carolina, to attend the NC Maker Faire.  If you've never been to a Maker Faire, I highly recommend you check the site and find one near you.  This is a great event that has something for children of all ages.

I went to the NC Maker Faire to help out Susan from The Bored Zombie.  She had posted that she was going to run a booth and make quilt blocks.  This is totally what I'm about so I couldn't pass it up.  (For the record, I took my camera, but promptly forgot it in the camper so all the pictures I got were from my phone.)

You can read all about the crowd-sourcing project over on The Bored Zombie.  I was there to help with the pressing, the trimming and the sewing.  I had an absolute blast.  Partly because I was totally in my element and because I love talking about all things quilting and sewing.

I could bore you with some more pictures of Maker Faire or just encourage you to GO to Maker Faire.  There are mini faires all over the country.  All over the world!  Go, make!

Angora Bunnies

This post is just a little peek at these bunnies.  They were too cute to not take a picture of.

There were very tame and the woman doing the demonstration would just pick one up and spin fibers she picked right off the rabbit.  The rabbits were a little nervous because of all the attention, but they were very interested in people.  I missed it with the camera, but one bunny stood up on its hind legs and almost waved at everyone.

These are not the only pictures I took at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, just the first pictures I'm sharing.

I will share pictures from the working dogs demonstration.  The working dogs are my favorite part of sheep and wool.

Critter Crochet

This little monster landing in my tree today.
See the tiny little wings?
This little bunny hopped out from behind the shed.
I got in for a closer picture.
Then he turned and hopped away.