Teal Mini Swap – I made a mini…I’m gonna get a mini

Designed by Beth Helfter, EvaPaige Quilt Designs, the Teal Mini Swap is an annual event intended to raise awareness for ovarian cancer, provide funds for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, and to give quilters and sewers a fun little swap

This is my entry into the mini quilt category over at Amy’s Creative Side.  I wrote this post less than a week ago to say thank you for my partner in the Teal Mini Quilt 2016 swap.

I was moved to participate this year, because my sister-in-law, Helene is currently receiving treatment for a gynaecological cancer.  Chemo was/is scheduled every 3 weeks since mid-August and continues through November, 2016. Helene is a remarkably strong and vibrant woman, but she is overwhelmed with debilitating side effects from chemotherapy.  I hoped I could raise her spirits and your awareness of this monstrous disease by taking part in a very worthy cause.  

After signing up I was quickly paired with the lovely Ms. Tony Jean Dickerson of Kansas City, MO. As participants we each received a small piece of the specially selected teal swap fabric – this year a lovely Moda teal (its the dark teal square in the picture below!) –  which we were asked to use  when making a mini quilt or mug rug for our swap partner. We were instructed to make our Minis or mug rugs in September and get them delivered to partners no later than October 2. 

Tony Jean and I quickly became Facebook friends and started chatting via Messenger, e-mail and on the Facebook page created for the swap.  I learned that Tony Jean works for a school system in Kansas City, that she would like a mini-quilt for her new office…and her office is in an ultra modern building with a bold blue and orange colour scheme.  I love orange and blue together, so was eager to start pulling fabric, cutting, piecing, and sewing on the mini for her.  At first I was afraid that the various teal fabrics wouldn’t play well together, but much to my pleasure, all the shades of blue, orange and teal that I pulled went together well.  Here is a photo of the colours I ended up choosing, including the teal fabric provided by the Swap Host and Moda.

After poking around Pinterest Boards and pins for a day or two, I found my inspiration in this lovely mini quilt by Terry Aske of Terry Aske Art Quilts.  You can check out her “Mostly Teal” mini quilt in more detail by clicking here if you are so inclined.  You should go, because there are a lot of really beautiful textile and fibre art pieces on her website.  Don’t forget to come back.

“Mostly Teal”  by Terry Aske – TerryAskeArtQuilts.com

 

I knew I didn’t have the skills to make anything nearly as wonderful as this, but I did happen to have lots of fabric snippets in the colours that Tony Jean asked for, as you can see.   So I began…

It only took one evening to piece my version…which I’m calling sTeal Magnolias. I’m happy to say there were no snags or hiccups during the piecing, and it turned out to be as cute as a button, all blue, green, orange and teal.

FYI, the mini quilt was supposed to be no more than 18″ square (Tony Jean’s mini did end up just a smidge bigger finished).

Also FYI, I have absolutely no machine quilting skills at all because I either hand-quilt or send all my tops out to be long-arm quilted.

Also FYI, I didn’t think I should hand-quilt this fairly modern wonky log cabin, so after I finished piecing the mini, I resolved I would machine quilt it on my Babylock by myself.  Yikes, OMG, Holy Heck Hermione, etc., I was very nervous that after all my hard work, I would wreck it at this stage. So with my heart in my mouth and my fingers crossed, I commenced machine quilting. And HOLY MOLEY IT TURNED OUT GREAT.  See.

I went with in-the-ditch quilting for the  log cabins and very narrow rows straight lines with some gentle curves every 4th or fifth row. I used my walking foot and a Hera marker to try to keep everything fairly linear,  Here is the back of the quilt.

As you can see the back is pieced with scraps I had on hand and a sample block that I had drafted and discarded for the Cloud9 New Block Blog Hop (which is a whole ‘nuther story for a whole ‘nuther day).  I hand printed the label with a dark teal pigma pen (so it should last forever), glue basted it to the quilt and quilted it down, then popped it into the mail for my new friend Tony Jean Dickerson in Kansas City, MO. USA.

I sure hope she likes it.  I am beyond excited to get mine from her  in the mail.  I’ll post  a picture as soon as it gets here.  Yay!