Alison Glass Mini Quilt Swap Part 1

Instagram is a wonderful social media site that I love exploring on my phone.  Mini Quilt Swaps are very big on Instagram and after admiring several of them, I took a deep breath and plunged in earlier this year.

It’s been a lot of fun already.  My first swap this year was the Alison Glass Mini Quilt Swap.  I’m now in two more…wait, three more….OK it’s starting to look like an obsession!  And, I’m thinking of hosting one in 2016. Wahoo….

The requirements were we had to predominately use Alison Glass fabrics–a line that I wasn’t that familiar with.  I bought some fabric at QuiltCon and other shops to start stashing up.  I also discovered that I had a few fat quarters already in my stash.

Here’s the posting on the wonderful mini that I received.

MY FINISHED MINI QUILT–measures about 24 inches square. Some closeups are at the end of this posting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So here’s the story of how I made this miniquilt.

First, my initial fabric pull after I had a lot of fat quarters (mostly) in my stash.  I ended up using only Alison Glass fabrics, not the solids. I wanted a dense, complex surface, in keeping with the fabrics themselves.  But it was fun to think about a solids project based on this palette….maybe a future quilt. Who knows?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I made paper pieced designs for two blocks using EQ7 because I wanted to practice machine paper piecing and I wanted to get some really sharp points in some of the blocks.  Here’s the square in square block.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I fussy cut the center of this  square to get most of the orange flower in it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some layouts I played with.  You can see the diamond in a rectangle–the 2nd paper pieced block.  I used the blue tape to mark off a 25 inch square so that I caould stay with the size more easily.  I did NOT have a plan.  I fussy cut the fabrics and made pieced blocks and put them up on the design wall as I went along.  It’s my typical process.  I really liked the bold dots in one of the fabrics and decided to make it a mock sashing as a nod to tradition.

I really liked my diamond paper pieced blocks.  There are 2 of them in the layout below.  You can also see my free hand cut curve–well, what quilt is complete if it doesn’t get its curve on!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Layout is now further along.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I finished piecing it, I decided to machine quilt with my walking foot using a variegated thread. I didn’t mark it.  I followed the block designs and sometimes lines in the fabric. I then added some hand quilting with Perle thread size 8.  I wanted to outline some of the wonderful elements in the fabric. Here are some close ups of the quilting.