Minis, minis, minis

My sewing space consists of a small corner of our multipurpose game room. Even so, my little corner of mini quilts has been a slow, evolving work in progress. I have a lot of mini quilts from various quilting friends and swaps, and a few minis I have made as well.

A month or so ago, I finally made a little mini I have had on my mind for a long time. I grew up a huge Star Trek fan, especially Next Generation. "Make it Sew" gives a nod to two of my favorite things. I used the foundation paper pieced pattern called My First Alphabet by From Blank Pages. Fabric is a mix of Bonnie and Camille lines on Vintage Modern low volume dots with Tasha Noel Vintage Market navy binding. Let's just pretend that the word "sew" is perfectly centered, or let's call it jaunty.

I originally had it hung in the top left of my sewing corner, but it was too narrow for the space. I decided to move it, and wanted to fill the space left. My quilting friend Ellyn and I decided to do a little mini quilt swap for our respective sewing areas. I was pretty excited about it; Ellyn and I are kindred spirits and I love her work. I was also happy to have a small, short time period swap with no pressure of extras. 

I have been eyeballing CraftyPod's free Cover Girl Rosette Pattern (from the cover of her book on English Paper Piecing called All Points Patchwork). I decided to make four blocks and applique them onto a netural background. Ellyn's only space requirement was to keep the quilt width at 16" or less. To accommodate Ellyn's wall space, I scaled the pattern down to 85%. I am disappointed that I didn't take any decent photos of the blocks as I made them. I didn't set out to fussy cut Bonnie and Camille scallops for each block, but after I did one it just seemed to be the natural progression of things. I love the effect. 

I hand appliqued each block onto a Carolyn Friedlander botanics low volume print. Sorry it is so hard to see in my too-bright pic. Placement of the blocks was interesting. I creased the center and halfway from the center to the edge, measured where each block should be to line up, and then made little dots at where each point should line up with water soluble marker. You can see creases and dots a bit in the pic below. I have no idea if this is a good or goofy way to line it all up, but the end result worked out fine. I tried doing the applique in a hoop, but that mostly annoyed me. I appliqued the last three without a hoop.

I was able to use my new custom rubber stamp on a twill label. 

Ellyn made me an awesome Thimble Blossoms Picadilly Circus dresden plate using Hello Darling (my current fabric line obsession) mini with paper pieced "Create" underneath. I love to have quilty messages on my wall, along with super bright and scrappy fabric. I also requested a bit of an odd size to fit the hole in my space. She nailed it! I love how the orange background makes the dresden plate and "create" pop.