Bee Quilt for Baby Robin

I can finally share my latest baby quilt! This is yet another quilt, I made with the help of the lovely ladies of the Quilty Circle of Bees. 

The block we sewed is called the 'Rocky Mountain Puzzle' block and I picked turquoise, pink and curry/chartreuse as the main colours and white and black/white fabrics for the background. It's always a nice surprise when you open the envelopes from your bee mates and see what blocks they made since we sew with our own fabrics. It gives the quilt such a great variety of different fabrics without looking completely wild and uncoordinated.

I made three blocks, my bee mates made all the other ones. I loved how it turned out, it's such a happy and fresh looking quilt! 

For the binding I used left over strips from a backing of another quilt. This print has large dots, so the binding appears to be stripy - and I like that a lot. As always with baby quilts, I sew the binding on by machine for extra durability. 

For the backing I used my favourite wide screen cross-hatch fabric in pink. In the bottom right corner is a label, made from one HST. 

This quilt was sent earlier this week to Robin and her parents, who live in Amsterdam, Netherlands.  Yesterday I received such sweet photos from Robin with the quilt... seriously, sewing a baby quilt is just the best! 

The quilt measures about 48" (123cm) square.

Thank you to me bee mates Melanie, Allison, Madga and Saadia for making the blocks! 

Fire and Ice & Mini-Kreuzung

Making a mini quilt for friends is the best! I took part in the mini quilt swap organised by The Modern Quilt Guild two times and exchanged quilts at QuiltCon, and it was such a nice thing to do. Both times I was lucky enough to receive absolute stunning mini quilts that hang in my sewing studio. 

This mini swap was a bit different since my friend Marla of penny lane quilts and I wanted to make a mini quilt for each other and organised our own little swap. 

This is the mini I made for Marla. I picked oranges and turquoise fabrics and added a lot of texture with Essex linen and shot cottons. I loved the play with value and colour and my other quilty friend Juli of Zahada Mod mentioned that it was a great design choice to put warm and cool colours together. 

And I haven't thought of colour temperature before. But Juli is right, it's such an interesting play between cool and warm, so I named the quilt 'Fire and Ice'. Very suitable I think. 

I quilted in simple straight lines, mostly 1/4 inch apart, sometimes smaller. I picked three different colours matching the fabric colour. All thread is 50wt Aurifil thread. 

And I made a faced binding using Audrey's tutorial again. I'm so happy how crisp the edges are. Fire and Ice is 21.5" (54cm) square. 

Now look what my friend Marla made me: 

I absolutely love this quilt! It's a mini version of Marla's large quilt 'At the Junction' which I adore and I had asked Marla to make me a mini that is similar to that one. Never would I imagined to receive a mini version of her multi award winning quilt! 

'At the Junction' placed first in the Modern category at the American Quilter’s Society (AQS) Quiltweek show in Grand Rapids. It also placed first in the Modern Category at the AQS Fall Paducah show and had placed “4th Overall”. 

Marla's large quilt was also exhibited at QuiltCon 2019 in Nashville, TN, where I couldn't attend. So I'm even happier to have the mini version at home now. 

Marla named her quilt 'Mini-Kreuzung' which I love, junction means Kreuzung in German. Mini-Kreuzung is about 22x28" (56 x 71cm) and will get a special place in my sewing studio. As soon as I can buy a suitable timber rod I'll hang it up and show you my corner of the sewing studio with all the other mini quilts I received from quilty friends. 

It was a lot of fun to unpack our quilts in an online meeting, that almost was as much fun as meeting up in person. 

I am so grateful for Marla's generosity and her beautiful quilt, which I will cherish for ever.