Little Quilts Mini Quilt Swap

So today is my turn to post in the Little Quilts mini quilt swap blog tour.  We each have to make a mini quilt for a secret partner from one of the designs in the Little Quilts book by Sarah Fielke and Amy Lobsiger.  And don't miss the giveaway for this book at the end of the post - it is a gorgeous book with lots of beautiful mini quilts in it - quick and fun to make.

I decided to make the quilt you can see on the right hand side of the front cover which is called Drawn Together.  Since my secret partner (who I can't reveal in this email) is a LEGEND, I did have some mental to-ing and fro-ing in choosing fabrics with a bit of nervous second guessing going on.  Eventually I got started with an idea of black stars on a rainbow scrappy background. 

I dragged out all my coloured scrap drawers (the OCD in me has my scraps stored in coloured drawers, orange in the orange drawer, yellow in the yellow drawer etc) and worked my way through the rainbow until I had foundation paper pieced all eight segments.  I'm quite the foundation paper piecing nerd so I loved this bit.  It appeals to the perfectionist in me.  

Once it was all together, I auditioned a ton of fabrics for the border but settled on this Lakehouse print which is one of my favourite prints of all time and seems to work well whatever you do with it.  

I don't know if you can see in this photo but I quilted it using a 1/2" diagonal cross hatch with a cream aurifil 50wt thread.  I wanted the quilting to show and I love something quilted to within an inch of its life which doesn't take too long on something this small.  

And then after a good rummage through my stash drawers, I found what I think is the perfect binding - it's a Suzuko Koseki stripe.  I cut it 2" wide so that the binding would be really nice, skinny and tight.  I also joined the binding seams straight which I always do on a stripy binding so you can't see any joins throughout the whole binding.  I did machine the back down which was a bit of a fiddle but I've lost the enthusiasm for hand sewing anything these days.  And voila, it's done and will be mailed off to my legendary quilting partner this week.  I take comfort from the fact that, even if your partner doesn't like something you make them in a swap, they have to say they love it out of politeness so either way it will turn out fine.  

And finally, if you'd like to win a copy of Little Quilts, leave a comment on this post and I'll draw a winner randomly in about a week.