Nifty Gifty :-)

You may have heard that Kristi from Schnitzel and Boo is super awesome and organized a mini quilt swap! You may have seen a little sneak peek of what I made here, but I didn't want to give too much away until I got it in the mail and gave it a little time to get to the recipient.

I loved making this! It took me forever to decide what to do, but I decided that I should use this opportunity to try out new patterns and techniques. I've loved the Arkansas traveler block forever, and I would like to make a bed-sized quilt one day. I used the paper piecing tutorial from Lee at Freshly Pieced.

I used fabrics from my stash, and a good number of them were scraps from this project. (Which is still a WIP...) I backed it in some good ole pearl bracelets, and for the first time ever, I did circle quilting!

That was way harder than I thought. I think I started and picked out the middle swirling at least three times. Eventually, I figured it out. I used my walking foot for most of it and then went back in and backtracked to the center with FMQ. It's a little wobbly, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!

I forgot to put on a label, so before I finished quilting it I used one of the circles in the print as a label and wrote on it with a permanent fabric pen.

I also added some corner pockets so that she will be able to hang it with a rod if she wants to!

I put the binding on by machine, which I don't love (I much prefer hand binding!) but I'll be honest, I was a little pressed for time!

And in the tradition of Tales of Ineptitude, there were a few hiccups (taking out quilting notwithstanding). I chain piece binding as I put it together, and when I was putting this one together, I just grabbed for the next blue strip and sewed it on without paying too much attention. Oops. At least I got a good laugh at 3am. :-)