Mini Quilt swap 1

As  I have only recently restarted quilting and other needlecraft after quite a long absence I don't have many UFO. I have been working on my millennium cross stitch sampler ( which is a very late project) but I decided to undertake several smaller projects during the second half of August and the beginning of September

A little while ago I signed up for two mini quilt swaps. Both have to be finished by the end of this month. the first one I am going to tell you about today as it is almost complete. The second I will tell you about next week as it nearly done but still missing some finishing detail.

The first swap is with Quilting Gallery and is called Friendship embroidery mini quilt swap. There is a piece of embroidery which must be included in the quilt. The quilt must be at least 12 inches either way and a maximum of 24 inches. Other than these two rules we were free to do our own thing. I decided I wanted to make a square quilt.

I started by completing the embroidery. The embroidery is designed by Leena Green of Stitching Cow. Although the size could be altered I made it as it came.

The embroidery was nice and straight forward using only back stitch, lazy daisy and french knots.

I then decided to add a border around the embroidery.

Next I wanted to use half square triangles. Since restarting quilting in April I have only used these on one quilt, a baby quilt, made using the broken dishes pattern. I wanted to practice getting my points perfect. Here is the baby quilt I made.

I decided to use blue and white fabric to complement and co-ordinate with the purple. Here are my HST

I made the HST bigger than I needed so I could trim them to size and then stitched them together as borders.

I wanted the triangles to go round the border and give a feeling of movement. I was really pleased with how the HST worked out apart from two on the left hand side. I unpicked this side twice but still could not get it perfect. Guess I have to do more designs with HST's to get more practice.

I then wanted a final border but also decided to include some more embroidery.

I had pressed it all out but we had unexpected visitors and it got pushed into my sewing bag and is now all creased up. The creases make it look squiffy but it is actually a nice square of 18 inches. All that's left is to quilt and bind it once I've re pressed it. The quilt will then go to its new owner. I hope they will like it. So almost complete my first quilt swap ever.