Schnitzel & Boo Mini Quilt Swap - Sent

Shortly after signing up for my first instagram swap I saw the posts about round four of the Schnitzel and Boo Mini Quilt Swap.  I've admired the mini' that are made for this swap for a long time and immediately jumped on the chance to participate. 

I was paired with Joy, @J.Meadows, from Texas who said she loved bright happy colors.  In her free time, when she's not sewing, she likes to workout and spend time with Tiny, her Grate Dane.  I wasn't sure what I wanted to make at first and ended up pulling out the scraps from Two Birds, One Stone, my Pantone 2015 challenge quilt and playing with the leftover blocks.  I had a few small blocks left and started by chopping them up to piece a teeny-tiny star block.  This sucker finished at 2.5" square. 

After that I added two more rounds of star points to make the finished mini about 12" around.  It was fun to use of these little scraps from my favorite quilt.  I hoped that the bright, scrappy colors would translate to something that Joy would like.

I ended up procrastinating and getting caught up with work and other things and didn't get back to quilting my mini for about two months.  I finally sat down to quilt it two weeks ago.  I wanted to play with shapes for the quilting and started by outlining two squares, on point behind the largest and the middle stars.  Then I filled in the background of each star, starting with a micro-stipple, bubbles for the middle, and straight lines for the outside.  I'm really happy with how the quilting came on this.  Although I must say that the foot I used for my machine started to squeak really badly after a little while.  Any thoughts on how to stop that from happening again?

I used a large scrap for the backing that I happened to have on hand.  It's not my favorite fabric but I though the colors did coordinate nicely.  I bound the quilt using a bright yellow strip I had on hand.  It was a littler narrower than I usually like to go for bindings but I managed to make it work by glue basting the unsewn side down before machine stitching it.  That's a trick I picked up at retreat earlier this year.  It's my new favorite method for perfect machine binding.  Let me tell you, those corners are tight!

For extras, I included a charm pack of V and Co's Simply Style since my partner mentioned that she liked their fabrics.  I also had a cute notepad and package of buttons that I had won previously at quilt guild but wasn't going to use.    Joy asked for notions in her extras so it seemed like a good fit.  Since I'm on a diet and I know that Joy likes to work out I threw in some yummy EPIC beef jerky instead of chocolate or sweets which was a win.  She's had to hide the jerky from her husband since they both really like it!

This was a great experience for me and I think I would definitely participate in this swap again.  Hopefully I'll be on top of things and catch the signup period on Instagram before it's closed for round 5!

You can find even more of the amazing quilts that were made 

for this swap by searching instagram for any of the following hashtags

#schnitzelandboominiquiltswap

#quiltersofawesome

#makeaquiltmakeafriend

Linking up with Sew Modern Monday.