Thursday 15 January 2015

A finish! Schnitzel & Boo mini quilt swap

I am very pleased to share my first finish of 2015. Yay! Although it is for a swap so I'd have to be a bit buttsy to not get it done in time.... But I digress, and a finish is a finish.


Ta da!!

Anyway, I am participating in Round 3 of the Schnitzel & Boo mini quilt swap. I did Round 2 as well and had such a great time both making and receiving that I was super keen to get in there again.

My partner this time seemed to be quite different from me in likes and tastes. Reading the questionnaire responses I was like "Oh my".... Nothing dramatic, just liked fabric designers I hadn't heard of, and talked about split complimentary colour schemes. Thankfully she also has a bucketload on things pinned on Pinterest - from colour schemes, to quiltspiration. Then, even better, she made a swap inspiration board. Jackpot! From there I got colour ideas, pattern ideas and I hit the road.

Here is a preliminary sketch I did trying to map out what I was going to do.


I changed it around a bit from that original sketch for my finished mini, but that was my start.

I was inspired by this fab floor cushion by Nicole from Snips Snippets which she entered in Sewvivor. I used her tutorial to make the hex plus blocks. Once the blocks were made I had to work out how to trim them down - no fancy rulers here (although I think I'd quite like one after this). Thank goodness for my math degree!

Once the hexies were done it was time for the triangles. As I had been going for a look with varying shades of the same colour, I decided to put white borders on the inner triangles and then the darker print on the outside of the inner print. It resulted in a cool star shape in the centre.

For binding I chose one of the Cotton + Steel basics in yellow with the while pluses. I though it would nicely compliment the pluses in the actual mini. Sad to say that the distance between the pluses / the way I cut the fabric meant nearly all the pluses are on the back. Oh we'll, can't win them all I guess. I used this fab tutorial by Jaybird Quilts to bind the angles on the hexi. It was very straightforward.



I backed it in this nifty Terra Australis print by Emma Jean Jansen since my partner is not from Oz.


At this point I am going to say that this is the first thing I have made on my new machine and I LOVE it!! See that quilting? So nice to have a machine that doesn't throw a fit at the idea of quilting something.

Finally, I made a Noodlehead Open wide pouch to go with the mini. My partner said she liked things in red and white, with her initial and a nautical theme, so I thought I'd make a H and a mini Cheerio block in red and white since that would look like a little life buoy. Unfortunately it also looks like an 'O' so we had some unlucky letter combos going on.


(This picture is flipped - I think calling your partner a "ho" is a major swap faux pas).

Some quick unpicking, a new pinwheel block and there we go. Much better.



I have also thrown in some Haighs bullets (we're talking chocolate here), a Cuzco FQ and a cute little pin.  




I hope my partner loves it as much as I have enjoyed making it.

Linking up for January's A Lovely Year of Finishes.

1 comment:

I love getting comments! Feel free to say hi. I'll do my best to reply back - sometimes work and chasing after Moo & Bird might make me tardy.