Tag Archives: Sew My Stash Mini Quilt Swap

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It's been a year of colorful minis. I've participated in quite a few swaps. At the moment I'm only signed up for one in 2016. I'm going to try to resist joining a bunch in favor of some larger finishes in the coming months. As a quick review of 2015, I'm sharing my five most visited 2015 blog posts here.

Top 5 of 2015

Top Five 2015 Posts

  1. Schnitzel and Boo Mini Swap (round 3) - 830 pageviews
  2. TGIFF: More Zippered Pouches - 623 pageviews
  3. Sew My Stash Mini Quilt Swap - 622 pageviews
  4. Text Me Mini Quilt - 585 pageviews
  5. Rainbow Mini Swap - 530 pageviews

I'll share my specific 2016 goals with you for sewing, quilting and blogging in tomorrow's post. You can also see all my completed quilts in my gallery. If you're new to my blog, you can learn more about me in my New Quilt Bloggers Post from June.

Linking up to the Best of 2015 Linky Party.

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Leasa hosted the Sew My Stash Mini Quilt Swap on Instagram. The shipping window ended earlier this week and my partner Kathryn received her package yesterday.

Right around the time that our first check in photo was due, I was working on my first Swoon block. I sew a second line of stitching 1/2" from the first where triangles are going to be trimmed off so I'll automatically have HSTs that just need to be trimmed to size. (See an example in step 4 of my Watermelon Plate Tutorial.) I had stitched these HSTs (trimmed down to 2.5" unfinished) with my Swoon scraps and they were in some of my partner's favorite colors.

I decided if I made some progress on a couple more Swoon blocks I would have a nice variety of HSTs to use for a mini. And remnants from another projects was definitely in the spirit of sewing my stash. Each swoon block provided a variety of print A/print B HSTs, print A/background HSTs and print B/background HSTs, so using the pieces from three Swoon blocks gave me nine different varieties of HSTs, and my background fabric, as you can see, is scrappy low volume. I used four of each variety, giving me 36 blocks to play with. I considered creating a pattern with the HSTs, but opted to go with random. I threw all my HSTs into a bag and pulled them out one by one and lined them up. I made one switch to avoid a section there was a cluster of one fabric. So, it's 94% random. ;-)

I opted to quilt it with match stick quilting, using white Aurifil 50wt thread. This was the first time I didn't worry about my lines being perfectly spaced and perfectly parallel and I love the effect.

For the binding I used some of my favorite Alison Glass fabric which coordinated well with the colors in the quilt. I didn't have a navy blue thread, so I opted for turquoise (Aurifil #2810, 50wt). I love this effect, but it did make the imperfections stand out.  You'll see lots more photos of this binding when I get my binding tutorial up on the blog.

I used more of my HSTs to make QSTs as a feature on an openwide zipper pouch. I'd already cut the main fabric out before I realized that my extra was practically larger than my quilt. ;-)

 

Yesterday I also received this amazing swap package from Ginny! I love the big mini and the mug rug. Plus mini charms, chocolate and a fun wind-up toy. So excellent!

I'm linking up to TGIFF, Fabric Frenzy Friday, Link-A-Finish Friday, Finish It Up Friday and Adrienne's 2015 Q4 Finish Along post. See all my Q4 goals here.

Thanks for visiting!