Easter Mini Quilt

I finished my Easter mini quilt.
I had so much fun making this: selecting the cutesy fabrics, picking patterns from Happy flower Quilts, and designing my own, and going all out on the machine quilting. Let me take you on a tour:

An overview of all its pastel cuteness!

Tulip. I designed the tulip block myself. I quilted it to accent the petals and leaves, pressing the background back with very dense parallel lines.

Baby Animals.

Spring Sunshine.

Flying Geese, leaving for the North after spending winter with us.

Tulip. This yellow one has more pointy petals (in the quilting, the piecing is the same as the pink one). Frolicking Lambs. This fabric is so cute, I didn't want to cut it into tiny pieces, and simply used a small panel of it instead.

Easter Baskets, filled with tulips, buttercups, bunnies and strawberries.

Basket, filled with tulips and surrounded by butterflies.

Spring Breeze. I quilted breezy swirls in the background.

Easter Bunnies. I designed this myself. There is very little contrast between the bunnies and the background (that's the way it is in nature, too), but flattening the background with quilted clam shells helps the bunnies jump out a bit more. Find the free pattern by clicking here.

Spring Blossom. I designed this one, too, for the center dresden, I used a pattern from Happy Flower Quilts.

And this is how it is displayed on the living room wall. It's not completely flat because I bound it by folding the backing over to the front. I would have done a proper (and flatter) binding, but I really wanted to use the same fabric as the backing and simply didn't have enough left to do that, and I can live with the wonkiness just fine.

Happy Easter!

Easter mini quilt, ready for basting!

I designed this little quilt myself, using some pieced blocks from "Happy Flower Quilts" by Atsuko Matsuyama.

Ready to baste!

Spring buds bursting!

Designed these rabbits myself. I gave up good contrast in favour of fun backgrounds!

Spring breeze.

Basket of tulips (notice the butterflies in the background).

Easter baskets: tulips, bunnies, strawberries, flowers!

Baby animals: ducklings and fawns.

Spring sunshine!

Geese returning after winter

Tulip (own design) and more baby animals (this fabric is too cute to cut up, so I just used a 3' by 6' panel)

Same tulip, different colour.

All in all I love this little quilt. It was a lot of fun to chose the fabrics and do the fiddly appliqué, on the petals of the spring burst and on the tiny baskets and bunnies. Halfway through I lost my cream background fabric (still have no idea where it is) so I gave up on contrast all together and just picked fabrics for fun! The only concession I made to "proper design" is limiting my colour pallet a bit. I stuck to teal, yellow, pink and purple (a little unintended green and blue may have snuck in :-) ). This little quilt is going to be hung in our living room, at eye height, so it's easy to get up close and have fun discovering all the little designs in the fabrics, and I don't mind that it's a bit of a pastel muddle when viewed from the other side of the room!

And I started yet another quilty project! I'm finally tackling my scraps. I sorted them into a rainbow of sorts, and started improv piecing. We'll see where that is headed later! I am also almost finished on my lone star quilt (pictures on Instagram, as sara_brankaer ).

More Valentine Sewing

Here are the crafts I made for the #sendalittleloveswap2018 .

The neat inside of the tea cosy, before lining.

Winter love, for Marieke

Spring love, for Pieter

Fall love, for Lucas

Summer love, for Felix

Loop on top of the tea cosy.

The whole thing. (pattern from Happy Flower Quilts, by Atsuko Matsuyama)

Made with love

I used a blind hem stitch to machine applique the hearts on, after quilting each panel.

The other side of the whole thing

More details of the quilting and machine appliqué

Perfect framing: all my swap gifts in one picture (you can see the mini in the mirror)

I covered some buttons with the fabrics I used.

Four seasons of love mini quilt.

A lovely ensemble! I can never decide which side of the tea cosy is prettiest, ...

... so I just keep turning it, ...

... round and round!

I had a lot of fun making this, the swap spurred me to make some fun crafts, which I never would have made just for me. I always get stuck, because I don't need a mini or a tea cosy. I did do some very fun Easter stitching, though, more on that in my next post

My swap items, ready to ship.