#igminiswap Quilting

I've been working on the quilting for my #igminiswap. First I did stitch-in-the-ditch for the whole quilt, and then I could start playing.

 I'm really liking how it's looking so far!

I love how the threads show up on the back. I've finished with this light blue thread and now I have to do the yellow and pink threads. They'll really show up on this dark blue backing fabric!

I should be on track to have it finished in time to mail on Monday, or Tuesday at the latest. I can't wait to see what my partner thinks of it!

Finished #igminiswap Quilt Top

I have finally finished the quilt top for my #igminiquiltswap partner!

My partner said she loves low volume, but equally loves brights. As I said in my last post, my low volume stash is almost non-existent, so brights it is! I sure hope she likes it!

I also hopes she doesn't mind that I was just a little short on the light blue solid fabric. For three of the triangles I had to add a seam to make the piece big enough to fit. I don't think it will be very noticeable when the quilting is finished.

Now I just need to get it basted, quilted and bound...quickly. It's supposed to be in the mail by December 1st (5 days from now). I see a lot of quilting in my near future!

Round Trip Quilts - Round 2

Boy, did I ever struggle with this round of Round Trip Quilts! This is Liz's quilt, as it looked when I received it from Jennifer.

Beautiful, isn't it? But I didn't know what to add to it! I knew almost right away that I wanted to work with the navy blue that shows up in some of the prints that both Liz and Jennifer used, but that was as far as I could get for days. I'd take it out and admire it, imagining different possibilities, but nothing really clicked.

Then Renee, of Quilts of a Feather, shared her finished traveling quilt on Instagram. You can see it in her blog post here. I loved the feather border someone added to her quilt, and immediately thought of Liz's quilt. So I finally had a plan!

The feathers are from Shape Moth and I had seen a few renditions of them and wanted to try them for myself, so I was pretty excited to give them a go. I knew they would take a long time though, and I was really pushing it close to the mailing deadline, so I decided to do two feathers, rather than the four that surrounded Renee's quilt.

My low volume stash is almost non-existent, so I didn't have enough of any one fabric to do the two borders, so I planned to piece the section to go with the feather. I didn't want the feather to stand out as a block, though, so I used a variety of background fabrics there too. When I had the feather half-pieced I really doubted that decision, but I kept going, hoping I would like it more when the whole feather was finished. And I did! Hopefully Liz does too.

 I used a few different dark blues for the feather.

I had heard from Renee that the three sections of the stem on the feather are tough to line up, so I was extra careful there. I pinned, then used a wide basting stitch for just the stem part of the seam. That's a trick I learned from Kristy of Quiet Play, and it worked perfectly. I could check that the stem lined up properly, then sew the whole seam with a smaller stitch. The extra step saved me from having to rip and re-sew.

Then I pieced the section to complete the borders. This was as close to improv piecing as I've ever gone, even though the pieces were all precisely cut. And I still found it stressful! Trying to make it look random, while keeping pieces of the same fabric sufficiently separate, nearly drove me crazy, especially since I wasn't actually working with that many different fabrics. In the end, though, I think the feather block blends with the rest of the border rather than standing out as a separate block, so it worked.

I added this skinny teal border to separate Jennifer's HSTs from my feather border because it looked too busy when I put them side by side. There needed to be some sort of division, and this fabric has some of both the teal and the navy.

I sure hope Liz likes what I added to her quilt!

Chelsea has finished her addition to my quilt and I love what she did with it! You can see it here.

If you want to check out all the quilts in the group, Jennifer has a page on her blog where she has all the updates for each quilt. You can find it here. Thanks, Jennifer, for putting it all in one place for us.

Next up for me will be Heather's quilt. She has chosen the theme "Wishes for my Daughter" and I can't wait to get started (though I have no plan yet)!