The Quilt With No Name: A Finished Quilt Top

Howdy y'all, and happy Friday! I'm excited to unveil my latest finished quilt top! You saw a sneak peek of it on Wednesday, but here it is in all its glory! :)

The lovely Belle, back and ready to continue her quilt modeling. :)

As I said on Wednesday, this is a pattern of my own design, though only because I couldn't find one that suited my idea. I couldn't find an on-point square that fit the image in my head, so to the drawing board I went! It was easy enough and I'm thrilled with the result. Funnily enough, the design idea came to me back in the winter while playing video games with my husband. We were waiting for a game to load and the loading screen really struck me. I doodled the basic image in my notebook and hung onto it for inspiration to strike.

Those little intersection squares finish at 1 inch square! :)

That inspiration struck with my Alison Glass fabric! But what to pair it with? If you've followed for a while, you know I admire Kitty Wilkin over at Night Quilter. She really has a way with color, especially rainbows! And she really made me want to use Essex Linen in a quilt. For my birthday, I splurged and got, not regular Essex Linen, but a METALLIC Essex Linen. Oh. My. Goodness. I was giddy when I opened it and saw the shiny!

Depending on how the light hits the linen, it can appear metallic or flat. Makes for interesting pictures! Lol.

To my surprise, I plan on hand quilting this one. I know, weird for me, right?! But the buzz from hand quilting Technicolor Galaxy: Pocket Edition seems to have hung around because all I can see is rainbow hand quilting when I look at this quilt top. I figure I'll wait until the quilting is done to trim off the excess fabric around the edges, even if it looks funny right now! Lol.

This one really shows off the shimmer!

I had hoped for a better photoshoot for this top, but alas, not all wishes come true! So I took it with me when I went to my parents' house to do some work. I tried hanging it on the clothes line, but eventually just spread it out in the yard. The girls, Belle and Jasmine, couldn't help but get involved! Belle, of course, thinks she's a quilt model after I told her how much everybody liked her last time! ;) Now it's just time to dig through my batting pieces and hope I find one big enough for this!

Linking up with Finish It Up Friday, TGIFF, and Finish or Not Friday!

Finish It Up Friday: Embroidery Success!

Howdy y'all, it's Friday once again and this time, I've got a finish to share! You may recall that my goal for the OMG March party was to learn some embroidery. I rented a book from the library with a lovely little kitty cat in it that was perfect for a starter project! I found an old embroidery hoop and embroidery floss in my craft supplies and snagged some Kona from my stash and got to work.

I absolutely loved doing this! I actually finished the cat on the chair in one sitting one afternoon. Then, a couple nights ago, I decided to add some lettering to it. I looked up fonts for ideas, but ended up winging it in the end. I love the rainbow words, it makes me smile every time I see it! :)

RAINBOW LOVE!

I'm linking up with Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, TGIFF at A Quarter Inch From the Edge, and (when the linky is available) OMG March Linkup!

Sunday Stash: HOLY MOLEY!

Howdy y'all! I hope you guys had a fabulous Christmas, I know I did. :) Fate smiled upon me and let my patients be healthy enough to not need me over the holiday, so I had Christmas Eve evening and all of Christmas Day off to spend with family. I was extra blessed this year, thanks to my parents and in-laws. One particular present had me squealing and dancing when I opened it, much to the confusion of just about everybody in the room. My parents got me a fat quarter bundle of Alison Glass fabric!! :D

Rainbow yumminess

When they asked me what I wanted for Christmas this year, I sent them a few links to some fabric I had been drooling over, one of them being this bundle of Alison Glass. I figured it would get passed over due to the price, but I put it in the list anyway with a note that fat quarters would be awesome, but fat eighths would be more practical due to price. My parents weren't feeling too practical it seems. LOL

I love the cool colors in this print.

I feel like I took this picture 10 different ways and all of them sucked. Apologies for the continued troubles with camera/pictures. :P

I see so many pretty projects in this fabric. I plan to use every last scrap! :) Thanks for stopping by y'all!

Putting Your Best Foot Forward

I've been noticing here and there that mini quilts are really a big thing in the quilting community. I don't have an Instagram, but apparently mini minis are all the rage right now! Even smaller than a mini, some of these are just a few inches square which is mind boggling. So when Kitty over at Night Quilter posted about a swap on Instagram, I ooohhhhed and aaahhhhed with the best of them, deciding that I would have to make at least one to grace my wall. Then the unthinkable happened.

Somebody was being a sleepy grouch during this photo session. Lol

I don't know why it is, but I get starstruck pretty easily in the blogosphere. There are people who have a ton of followers, who are extraordinarily talented, who are well known pattern designers, and some of them even work for/with companies and fabric producers. I know most quilters aren't famous by society's standards, but to me, these people are famous! The first time a blogger that I followed commented on my blog, I nearly jumped up and down on my couch and immediately told my best friend the good news! Lol.

I feel like I'm citing my sources for a research paper, except with a picture!

So when Kitty emailed me asking if I wanted to swap mini minis, I basically lost my mind with glee! I couldn't believe that somebody as awesome and talented as her wanted to take the time to swap with little ol' me! I tried to keep the gushing to a minimum as I accepted, though I'm not sure how successful I was. Lol. She told me some of her likes, but in the end, she gave me free reign because she wanted a 'piece of my style' on her wall. How. Awesome. Is. She?!

My little wee rainbow

If you follow Night Quilter, you know she is all about rainbow and color wheels. And she does some pretty paper piecing as well! So as I laid in bed that night, I started brainstorming. I wanted this to be a totally awesome piece of work that I would be proud to mail to her! And though I just started with EPP, I decided to design an EPP mini mini that I guess is original since I didn't use a pattern or inspiration picture? After having a vague idea of what I wanted, I sat in the floor with all my fabric and sorted through it until I found the colors I wanted. I took a note out of Jenn at A Quarter Inch From the Edge's book and laid them out in a literal color wheel in the floor to make sure things flowed well!

Easiest. Basting. EVER.

And after that, I drew out my design on graph paper, shooting for ~4 inches square as my final product, but I wasn't too hung up if it was bigger or smaller. I was so psyched by my progress that I made templates and basted everything Saturday night, staying up late. Sunday after church, I curled up in the floor again and started stitching everything together. It was so fun to see it come together so quickly, so I just kept chugging along and the next thing I knew, it was quilted and a binding was ready to be put on!

My ol' girl looks enormous next to this mini mini!

The binding was the worst part of this entire project, hands down. I wanted a skinny binding, so that may have been the problem. It was just so finicky and my corners weren't cooperating well. Overall, I think it's okay, but I'm not completely satisfied with it sadly.

It looks all lopsided in this pic, I swear it's not like that!

The title of this mini mini, Putting Your Best Foot Forward, was inspired by the backing fabric. These Cotton and Steel Viewfinders are pretty well known I feel like, but I hadn't actually sat down and read the titles of all the viewfinders. As I was going through my fabric looking for rainbow colors, I stopped to read them and it just seemed fitting. I was working so hard to put my best foot forward with this project! The quilting even emphasized it afterwards, such a happy coincidence! 

Guess who woke up and decided to be a model? ;)

I'm really liking this mini mini business! I'm definitely going to be making more of these in the future. I also think it's going to be a great way to try out new ideas or revisit old ones. So what about you? Are you going to jump onto the mini mini bandwagon? Or are these just too tiny for your tastes? Let me know! :)