Technicolor Galaxy: Pocket Edition

Howdy y'all!  When quilty friend Jenn @ A Quarter Inch From the Edge asked if I wanted to swap a mini mini, I jumped at the chance! Of course I do! Swaps always make me nervous but excited - a great combination for fun ideas!

Technicolor Galaxy: Pocket Edition!

So I contemplated ideas for a while, but I kept coming back to Jenn's WIP, Technicolor Galaxy (that's her latest update, it is coming together so well!). It's a phenomenal skill builder, go ahead and check it out, I'll wait. :) I kept wondering how to make such a big, complicated looking quilt into a mini mini. My answer, of course, was "Eh, I'll wing it and figure it out!" Some things just don't change, do they? LOL

Precious bits of Alison Glass found its way into this, as well as some Kona and other random bits!

I wish I had taken progress pictures of this little bit of sweetness, but it was actually pretty simple! I improv pieced the low volume background and starched it for good measure, something I had never done before. I appreciated the stiffness while working though!  Each colored pieced was placed onto the background individually with Heat n' Bond, then stitched on with a tiny zigzag stitch! That was the hardest part of the whole bit, especially with the tiniest pieces! I pondered over quilting for a while before settling on simple hand quilting. I kept with the rainbow theme and switched thread colors with each little quadrant. And because it looked unfinished, I added the same treatment to the binding. :)

Teeny weeny zigzags!

I had to head out to my parents the day I had planned to mail this out, so I snapped some pics on their porch and with my ol' girl, Belle. She's blind now, so she doesn't mind sitting in the grass to model a mini mini. Back in her prime, she would have grabbed it and ran off! :)

Belle is practically Vanna White. ;)

And just for fun, I snapped a pic of a momma and baby deer wandering by behind my parents' garden. Little baby still has some spots even! And of course, my parents' puppy wanted to be in the spotlight too, so a quick picture of Jasmine to tide her over. ;)

Pretty momma deer and her baby

This is as still as I could get Jasmine. Her tail was, of course, a blur! LOL

I had so much fun with this swap and I'm really proud of what I made! Jenn made me a lovely kitty cat mini to look just like LBC, which you can see here! I love it to pieces and have it hanging on my mini wall front and center. LBC has even been snoozing underneath it, so he must love it as much as I do! :)

Peels of Patience: A Finish!

That's right folks, I finished my Orange Peels! Y'all have been seeing these blocks since I started blogging and they are finally completed! :) All the orange peels are appliqued onto the background squares by hand using the freezer paper method. I used this tutorial that Amanda Jean shared over on Crazy Mom Quilts when she made her orange peel quilt. After that, I machine pieced the blocks together into a top.

THE TEXTURE!

I almost did the quilting with with my free motion foot, but decided at the last minute to use my walking foot/zigzag foot. I figured I could get straighter lines and be more consistent, but would have to pivot that quilt at every single corner. It was a pain in the booty, but I'm glad I stuck with my decision! The light gray thread I used just blends into those low volume squares, you almost can't see the quilting unless the light catches it! For the binding, I decided to take a note out of Scrapmaster and The Running Thimble's book and go low volume. I'm loving those little dots! :)

This isn't a very big quilt, but it's the perfect size for a car ride or to cover my lap while blogging or sewing on the couch.

And of course, a simple label. I decided to call it 'Peels of Patience' because the majority of the time I was sewing orange peels was in waiting rooms or waiting on other people. These peels saw many doctor offices, at least one emergency room, and several other places.

The backing really shows off the quilting, I love it!

I'm so glad to get this one finished and ready for some cuddles, though it will be weird to not have it to work on anymore. I'll just have to find another project for waiting rooms I guess!
Linking up with Finish It Up Friday and TGIFF! Also, this was my goal for OMG February! :) Also also, this was one of my goals for the 2016 Finish Along - First Quarter!

This quilt makes me so happy! :)

First Finish of the New Year: Orange Peel Quilt Top!

Happy Friday Saturday, y'all! I've got my first finish of the New Year to share! The Orange Peels are now a top/flimsy and off the design wall! Yipee! I wanted it to be bigger but I'm happy with the cozy lap size that I've ended up with.

 I've learned a lot after piecing this, but the biggest thing I want to remember is to make my background squares bigger next time and trim them down once the applique is done. You can see on quite a few blocks that points were chopped off (or dangerously close to it!) and as I was piecing, I realized my error. Despite that, I'm still loving it. :)

I still need to iron this one before I do anything else. It was just too late to bother with that by the time I finished! Lol

I'm just proud of myself for hand sewing all those orange peels, I never thought I would hand sew much of anything when I first started sewing! I machine pieced the squares together though because my sanity could not take that much hand sewing. Lol. I have plans to machine quilt it, it's just a matter of getting some backing material, which may take some time. In the mean time, I'm most likely going to be working on City Blocks! I've been mulling over quilting ideas and while I baste,
I'm sure the right one will snuggle with my brain. :)

Low Volume + Scrappy makes my heart smile

Also, I know I link up to her a lot, but the ever-fabulous Jenn @ A Quarter Inch from the Edge has deemed her year, The Year of the Stash. Many have followed up with her (here for example), making their own rules and guidelines for the coming year to keep our fabric stashes from expanding further. Although I feel my stash is pretty small, I'm joining in for the practical aspect that Jenn highlights in her manifesto. New fabric can be purchased, but it needs to be purchased with purpose, not just on a whim. I don't typically buy fabric willy-nilly anymore due to the money aspect, but I want to join along to put it in writing that my fabric purchases this year must have a plan/job in mind before they come into my home.

I hope everybody had a safe New Year! Have a wonderful weekend and thanks for stopping by! :)

Work in Progress Wednesday

HUMP DAAAYYYY! (Yes, I'm one of those people!) Hope your Wednesday finds you well! On my design wall this week is a project you will probably see on more than one WIP Wednesday. After seeing so many beautiful orange peel quilts, with the kicker being the bold colors on low volume version at Crazy Mom Quilts, I decided to give it a whirl. I started this a while back (think January), but it's a nice project to have on hand when I have an appointment to go to or I just want to snuggle into the couch and not venture upstairs into my sewing space.

I'm not much for hand sewing. I just don't have the patience for it, but I love the look of hand sewn orange peels. So I looked up the freezer paper method and pulled different techniques from several sources before embarking on what is sure to be a looooooooong project. As you can see, these peels are far from perfect, but I am proud of the progress I can see as I make more of them. Most of these fabrics are fat quarters I picked up at Jo Ann's (I got into the habit of picking up one or two fat quarters nearly every time I visited, so I accumulated enough to start this project without much fuss.)

I'm not sure how big I will make this. At times, I want it to be enormous! And other times, I'm fed up with it and debate on making it a pillow. Hahaha. We'll just see where the fabric leads me. :)
Linking up with Freshly Pieced!

-Jennifer