For the love of swaps

I’ve participated in a lot of swaps over the years, from Block Swap Adventure to online bees to handmade Christmas gifts.  Sometimes I’ve been blown away by the creativity and skill of my partner.  A few times my partner was a dud or never answered any communication.  Oh well, the positive experiences far outweigh the negative ones.

The DCMQG hosted it’s first swap among members this month, a mug rug swap!  My partner listed red and white fabric and batiks as dislikes.  She asked for a big-sized mug rug (around 10-12 inches) and I stalked her blog a little and found out she likes cats and dogs and dislikes tea and possibly likes retr0-looking funky fabric.  So going on that information, I got to work!

Am I the only person who finds making wonky stars completely mind-boggling???  I know I’ve said it before, but visualizing where things will go is SO DIFFICULT!!!  Luckily it turned out that all the letters were upright.  I used white Aurifil thread to densely quilt straight lines on a diagonal.  (Aside:  I sent my sister the Aurifil piecing box for her birthday this month and she is now an Aurifil convert as well.)

I wasn’t sure if my partner drinks coffee or not, so I sent some of my favorite hot chocolate and this cute owl mug with the mug rug.

The backing fabric is this pretty Color Me Retro blue/purple/green  floral print.

It was mailed yesterday, so it should be received today or Monday. 

Have a wonderful weekend!

Japanese Imports Swap

I was wandering around blogland last week and came upon the Japanese Import Fabric Swap on Gen X Quilters blog and decided to sign up for the swap and become a new follower to boot!  There were 28 spots and I’m thrilled to have one.  Each person will get 2 charms from each member, for a total of 56.  Here is the fabric I will be sending in.

It’s a Daiwabo print called Paper Dolls on red.   I used it here in a snowball block that is in my UFO pile.  I’ve used it for several small projects and think it will fit in nicely with the other fabrics I’ve seen posted on the Flickr site.  I have ordered it twice from Sew Deerly Loved on Etsy.  Kerri, the owner, has a great blog called Lovely Little Handmades and recently has put some photos of her beautiful Farmer’s Wife blocks on there.  In fact, I found them so inspiring, I ordered some fabric from her store to make copycats (this was before I adopted my Deploy That Fabric motto).   Sadly, I have ordered fabric once before for the Farmer’s Wife quilt, but I have NOT MADE ONE BLOCK YET…I have no idea where to start since I am confused by the whole template/rotary cutting instructions, but that is another blog post entirely.

Anyway, back to the Japanese Import Swap…I am thinking of making an I Spy quilt with the charms.  I found this pattern in a book I have.  It calls for 3.5” centers for the stars, so with the bigger size, I won’t need quite as many stars.  Plus I can probably put on a border or two to make up the size.

Since I am still trying to make good on my new motto to deploy that fabric, I think I will use Kona ash for the background and a dark aqua for the star points—fabrics I already have in my stash!

And, lucky me, I just received a wonderfully full and amazingly free package in the mail…I won a contest on Contemporary Cloth's blog for this:

The prize was 24 fat quarters of Valori Wells’s newest line called The Nest.  I love it!!!!  The colors are so pretty and my favorite pieces are the little birds.  Thank you, Contemporary Cloth!!!

Greek Cross Update

It took me a while to get the blocks finished for Esther’s birthday quilt, but I finally have them all squared up and ready to sew into the quilt top.  Originally I planned to do 4 x 5 blocks, but I have a bit more than 20 blocks…27, so I think I’ll do 4 x 6 instead and put the remaining blocks on the back.

Here are a few close ups of my favorite blocks.  Esther picked the tiny pink hearts on white fabric (the middle block in the top row) because she wanted plenty of hearts in the quilt.

Fox in the henhouse:

Deer and toadstools:

Toadstools on pink:

Foxes:

Hedgehogs and hearts:

Aren’t those hedgehogs cute?

Fall Tumbler Quilt

 I saw this quilt over at Cluck Cluck Sew last December and really wanted to make one like it.  But I was 9+ months pregnant at the time and not motivated to cut out a gazillion tumbler blocks.  I had barely enough energy to stay up after my two girls went to bed and watch old reruns of Law and Order and eat Bruster's ice cream:)

Since I saw Allison's quilt, I started collecting some fabrics I thought would look good in a similar quilt.  I've picked up a few fat quarters here and there and then last week I bought some 1/2 yards on sale at fabric.com and a few on Etsy.  I think I've accumulated just the right mixture of colors and scale to make this quilt beautiful.  Here's what I ended up with:



These fabrics were a departure for me.  I am partial to buying all the fabric in a quilt from the same manufacturer and line.  I've never used Joel Dewberry, Amy Butler, or the Japanese imports before.  My kids and I laid out all the blocks this morning and I am hoping to have it pieced by the end of tomorrow morning!