Blogger's Quilt Festival: Trying Something New!

Howdy y'all! I hope your Monday is going well! Today, I'm doing something I never thought I would do. I'm entering two of my quilts in a show! That show is the Blogger's Quilt Festival hosted by Amy's Creative Side and anybody who wants to can enter. For me, this a HUGE step out of my comfort zone. But after much hmm-ing and hah-ing, I decided that this would be a good thing. The online quilting community is amazingly supportive, so I couldn't think of a better time to enter my quilts into a show. :)

First up, I'm entering Technicolor Galaxy: Pocket Edition in the Mini Category. I've never been prouder of a little quilt than I am of this little beauty! As you could probably guess, this was directly inspired by the Technicolor Galaxy Skill Builder that so many have taken part in. I made this in a swap with quilty friend Jenn @ A Quarter Inch From the Edge and I fell absolutely in love with it as I made it. There are precious bits of my Alison Glass fabric mixed in that rainbow! :) You can read up more about this little mini here!

Rainbow hand quilting makes my heart sing!

Belle, the lovely Jack, for scale purposes. :)

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! :)

Finish It Up Friday: Back in the Mini Mini Game!

Howdy y'all, I hope your week has gone well! I've been getting sewing time in like crazy lately, so I actually had TWO finishes this week! I'm going to share one of them today and save the other for later next week. :)

So here is a mini mini I finished last night! It was actually done in one sitting after I got into a bit of a sewing frenzy. :) It's the logo for one of my favorite Youtube channels, Markiplier. It's a gaming channel and, despite the foul language, I usually laugh so hard that I cry when I watch his videos. Nothing like laughter to brighten any day, right?

This was a good project to get back to tiny sewing and getting back to the mini mini mindset. It was also a good little exercise in pixel-y piecing. The smallest white squares finish at one inch square! The mustache is appliqued on with Heat n' Bond and I actually did two layers - one layer was too transparent. Also, it's glittery!

You can barely make out the quilting on this one!

The quilting is...hmm...organized matchsticks? It's vertical lines that are more or less 1/4 inch apart, I wasn't too picky. Lol. Also, look how sharp that binding is! I used the Clover Wonder Clips and holy smokes! Those things are aweeeeesome!

Such a happy sewing wall. :)

This little guy gets to join the wall in front of my sewing machine. I've got mini's off all sizes now! Now off to plan more mini mini's, I've got a swap to get ready for! :)

Linking up with Finish It Up Friday!

A Finish is a Finish, No Matter How Small

Howdy y'all and happy Friday! I hope you're doing well! I've got a little finish to share this week. You may remember my mini Supernova that I made while playing around a while back. Well today it was finished!

I couldn't help but show how tall it is compared to the First Born machine. :)

I had plans for some dense quilting with this little guy, but absolutely hated it once I got started. After ripping it out, I did two lines of quilting, outlining the main shape. One line was in blue and one was in yellow, which is hard to see in my pics (still no replacement camera *sad face*). This binding kicks some serious butt and is my best to date I believe! As you can see, Baby 'Nova is a little less than 3.5 inches tall and wide! I've been in a bit of a rut this week, so I'm glad to break out and have some fun with this mini mini! Hope you have a good weekend y'all, happy sewing!

Getting tiny!

Linking up with Finish it Up Friday and TGIFF!

Finish It Up Friday: Mini Mini #2

Howdy y'all! Friday is here! Today, I was supposed to be sharing the primitive quilt and its new binding since my sewing machine is all better. But plans change. When I sat down to sew, for some reason, the last thing I wanted to do was work on a binding. The pull of a finished quilt wasn't strong enough to overcome this random dread. So I did what seemed best: I played!

I've had several mini mini ideas bouncing in my head since I heard about them. I immediately imagined the Supernova pattern from Quilting Modern in the miniature! I knew I couldn't make blocks small enough to make an entire Supernova in a mini mini, but I wanted to give it a whirl! This isn't quite what I wanted, but it's a start and I had so much fun with it. I didn't touch my ruler once; I just cut and stitched without abandon and it was relaxing. I was sad to see the clock ticking down to the last few minutes of my sewing time when I started putting the little 'blocks' together.

It's so tiny and wonderful, I can't wait to put it on my wall once it's finished. :) Hope you've had a productive week, sewing or otherwise!

Linking up with Finish It Up Friday and TGIFF!

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! :)