The Schnitzel and Boo mini has arrived in Sweden

IT HAS ARRIVED, it has arrived!!! 

After over two weeks in transit, the package has finally arrived in northern Sweden. The recipient is called Elizabeth, or lizziebird as she is known on Flickr.

When I got the email revealing my Swap Partner, one of the things which immediately caught my eye, was that she "had a thing for hedgehogs and Totoro". 

I didn't have a clue who Totoro was, but with the help of Google I soon found out. He's an incredibly sweet animated Japanese character. My first plan was to make a Totoro mini quilt, but checking her Flickr feed, I realised someone else had beaten me to it.  Instead I settled for a car / window sticker.

For the hedgehog I came across a fantastic paper piecing template on Artisania's homepage. I had never  done any paper piecing before, but with an engineer's logic I set off and made a trial version. 

After realising I needed to trim and press (a lot) more often, I dug out the nice fabrics. Some of these are from Karen at Blueberry Park and I had seen my partner liking her fabrics on Instagram. 

For my second go at paper piecing I am pretty pleased with how it turned out.

As I spotted a motorbike in her feed, I added some of the Alexander Henry bike fabric. One of the few of his designs without scantily dressed ladies...

With most of the extras sorted, I still hadn't decided on the 'proper' mini itself.

The hedgehog was too small to be the main thing, so I really needed to come up with something more. Checking through her Flickr profile I spotted quite a few projects from the book "Patchwork Please" with plenty of inspirational zakka projects. The envelopes caught my eye as she had a few of them in her feed.

Oups, another paper piecing project!

Oh well, if I could make the hedgehog, I should be able to do the envelopes, right?

Actually, this was much easier as there was a step by step tutorial in Love Patchwork & Quilting, issue 7.

 

Close-up of the label on the back. This was made at 50% of the original template:

So, here goes, the whole lot (minus the motorbike fabric, as I was too fast wrapping that up!)

The extras included: Totoro window / car sticker, curved quilting safety pins, The last Runaway about a quilter in the United States (my partner's home country) and written by the author or The Girl with the Pearl Earring, Hersey chocolates, the hedgehog minimini / mug rug, bike fabric and some Merry Christmas (in Swedish) labels. 

And finally the card, from Stonehenge, a place I have visited more times than I care to remember.

Thank you so much for allowing me to be your Swap Partner and getting to know you a little bit during these weeks. Thank you also for all the lovely photos from my home country!

The mini is on its way (very very soon)!

Everything is wrapped up, postage paid and ready to be dropped in the mail tomorrow!

It was great fun putting together, hope you like it Partner!!!

Modern Insta Bee - second month

June's our second month in the Modern Insta Bee, Hive 1 in the United Kingdom.

The request from Catrin, our June Bee Queen was to make the Come Together block using a beach related colour scheme - blues, yellows, and neutrals.

My fabric pull:

To make sure the blocks all match up nicely, we were asked to use grey / neutral in the connecting blocks and yellow in the corners. This is how my block ended up looking:

This block is huge! It finishes at 20"x20" when sewn into the quilt!

To see the blocks from other bee members and the progress with putting the quilt together, pop over to Catrin's blog.

Mini quilt swap hosted by Schnitzel & Boo

Schnitzel and Boo is hosting a second mini quilt swap!

Image from http://www.schnitzelandboo.com

Seeing all the photos of everyone's progress filling blogs and Instagram  last year, I was really annoyed I hadn't managed to sign up. This time I was ready and signed up in time.

The mission: To make a mini quilt (6"x6" to 24"x24") for someone you may not know, in return someone else is making a mini quilt for you.

After sign-up closed, I believe most us (six hundred people!!!!), were eagerly waiting for the email to tell us who we were making the mini for.

When the email finally came, THE BIG STALKING begun! Checking out their various profiles on the internet including their photos, their blog, comments on friend's photos, etc, etc. It has been great fun trying to get to know someone's likes and dislikes in a very short time.

To make it easier to find everyone participating in the swap, the following two hashtags are used: #schnitzelandboominiquiltswap and #makeaquiltmakeafriend

My partner stated she had a thing for a particular animal, so off I went to find some patterns. My heart sunk when the only one I liked was a paper piecing pattern. I had never ever tried paper piecing before. I decided to give it a go. This is the back...

Her profile on Flickr also has a book and projects from that book, both in her own feed and as favourites amongst her friends. Here was something which looked a bit easier…

Again, a block which required paper piecing, but having already braved it once, I felt a bit more confident on this one; straight lines, how hard can it be? Luckily, I had also seen a tutorial in one of the previous issues of the Love Patchwork and Quilting magazine.

For now, I'll only share the back of the mini. Some further sneaky previews can be found in my Instagram feed, @bossyoz.

According to the rules, I need to send off the mini quilt to my partner at the beginning of July, which gives me a few weeks to sort out the final bits like binding and some goodies.

Allegedly, there is another swap planned for the autumn. If you don't want to miss out, make sure you follow @schnitzelandboo on Instagram.

Post 1 (invite), Post 2 (FAQs)

Modern Insta Bee - the start of the first hive in the UK

I have joined an online Quilting Bee based on the book "Modern Bee - 13 quilts to make with friends", by Lindsay Conner.

As the first hive in the UK, we kicked off now in May. The first block for us to make is the one called "Painter's Palette". It's a variation on a traditional snowball block, but mixed up a bit.

The Queen Bee asked us to have fun and to use bold, bright colours; think sun glasses! She also challenged us a bit and suggested we use pieced snowballs.

Go over to The Occasional Quilter and have a look at her bright, fantastic blocks inside the block!

This is what I came up with:

If you like to follow the progress of the bees, make sure to check out Instagram from time to time. The hashtags in the image above lead you to "my" hive and also the UK hives, as well as the American ones.

If you like to join in the fun, there are further hives being created. This morning we were just shy of setting up the second hive and further will be created as there are more and more people interested. Go to Joanna Kent's profile on Instagram and leave a comment on the appropriate picture making sure you tag her.

Hope to see you in a hive not too far away!