Giving and Receiving

Yesterday, the Emerald Coast MQG had it's December meeting.  At our November meeting, we each brought in a sandwich bag filled with scraps that we swapped with someone else.  The goal was to make something with the scraps you received and give it back to the owner of the scraps at the December meeting. 

We're a new guild, and I thought this would be a good way to get to know each other, and also a good way to guarantee everyone would like what they got, since it was something that would be made out of their own scraps.

It was very much a success!  We had a great time seeing what everyone made for each other!

I got Kelly B.'s scraps, which was kind of awesome for two reasons.  One - they were polka dot scraps, and I.love.polkadots!  Two - since we've been Flickr friends for so long, I feel like I know her style pretty well.  It doesn't hurt to have access to her favorites on Flickr, so I could pretty easily figure out what she would want.

In at least one of her mosaics for a Flickr swap, she had a picture of this pouch that Tamiko made.  But then she also favorited this pillow of Tamiko's, that was using the same pattern.  Lucky for me, Tamiko posted a link to the paper piecing pattern on her blog, so I decided that I would attempt this.  I had to downsize the pattern about 50%, because some of the scraps were pretty small.  But I have to say, I absolutely LOVED making these little squares!  Once I got the hang of it, and got all my pieces cut, I had a little assembly line going, and it went pretty quick!

Kelly had also said somewhere that she likes gray linen.  I happen to be obsessed with gray linen but it's really hard to find.  About a week before the swap, I found some at Joann's, of all places (although they say it's black linen), so I used that to border the squares.  Here's the finished product!

I'm not gonna lie, that little pillow looks pretty awesome on my yellow couch.  You have no idea how much I wanted to just keep this for myself!

For the back, I wanted to put in a zipper, because I've never tried that on a pillow before.  I used this tutorial, and it was super easy!  I'll definitely be making more pillows with zippers!  I also wanted to use some more polka dots for the back, because I knew that the "gray" linen would be pretty bland by itself, so I used a piece that I couldn't quite make work on the front for the flap over the zipper.  

Since these pictures are kind of dark (I think it was raining the day I took them), here's some the Kelly took...

I reluctantly gave it to her at the meeting, still wishing I could keep it for myself.  But, she seemed pretty happy with it, so that made me happy.  I will be making a copycat one of these for my little yellow couch.

Valarie got my scraps, which were a mix of some leftover charms of Sherbet Pips (I used most of them to make this pouch) and Kona Curry, because I loooove Kona Curry.  And because I really liked how the Curry matched some of the Pips' hair.

Valarie and I have known each other since about the 6th or 7th grade, because we went to the same school.  After graduation, as it always is, people lose touch.  But thanks to Facebook, we got reconnected.  When she heard that I was moving back to the area and starting a MQG, she wanted to be involved.  So she's been coming to every meeting.  She doesn't have a lot of quilting experience, but she's a crazy garment sewer!  So, this was really her first modern quilt, and I am beyond ecstatic to call it my own!  And I love that she made gray the main quilt color - Curry and gray is a fantastic combo!

Can you tell I was happy to get it (even if I'm holding it the wrong way)?

Next up is a quilt I made for my friend's baby.  Except it didn't start out as a quilt for my friend's baby.  It started out as a quilt for my baby (who's not a baby anymore), about a year and a half ago.  I started doing Amanda Jean's Round and Round QAL, but just wasn't able to finish it.  So, I had this 50x50 quilt top just laying around, and I didn't know what to do with it, because I wanted the quilt for my daughter to be twin size.  I finally decided that I would just stop where I was with this, quilt it, bind it, and send it off to my friend.  Her daughter was born in September, so the Fallish feel for it was appropriate for her.

I have to say, until I quilted this, I was kind of just over it.  But, I really love how it's quilted (randomly spaced, mostly horizontal straight lines, with a few vertical lines thrown in).

And for the binding, I was going to use something completely different, but ended up not having enough of that.  Thankfully, I had plenty of this leftover owl fabric, and I think it's a perfect touch.

I hope little Sophie likes it. 

Oh, and in case you're wondering, I have plans for another quilt for my daughter involving Little Apples.