.: hey girl ... I love your mini :.

A little bit of blog-radio-silence over the last few days -- Vee and I have been printing up a storm, and getting sorted to teach our first-ever screen-printing class next weekend.

And all my sewing time has been spent getting this little mini together for the super-awesome Modern Mini Quilt Challenge hosted by Jennifer from Ellison Lane Quilts.

This is the first time I have entered the Mini challenge - in fact, I think it's the first time I've entered any sewing-related challenge.  I knew I wanted to make something especially for the challenge, and pretty quickly decided on something word-related.

My AusModBee month is August, and I am going to ask my bee-girls to make word-blocks, with a random-texty-print background.  Most word-blocks I've made so far have been from Tonya Ricucci's excellent Word Play Quilts book, so I thought I'd try out a paper-pieced word or two for the challenge.  

And I also really wanted to try and break away from my fussy-cutting obsession, and just slice into the fabric without worrying if I was cutting a word or design in half ... that was a whole mini-challenge in itself! 

So - challenge set - but what word ... or words ... to choose?

And then the Ryan Gosling 'hey girl' pics came to mind (here are a few on Pinterest).

I have a bit of a pink and orange thing going on right now, so tried to keep that my main colour-choice - there are so many of my fabric-favourites sewn into these words. And apart from the 'hey girl' words (which are from Elizabeth Hartman's excellent refrigerator magnet pattern ... except for the 'y' and 'g' which went a little off-track, totally my fault), I thought I'd add in a few little quilt blocks.

To add in a third main colour, I chose a long-time favourite Prints Charming print for the binding.

You can see that the quilting is a little random too - I hand-quilted in green, light blue and orange around the words and a few of the blocks.  And then I did a little straight-line machine-quilting.  And now for some close-ups ::

I cannot even tell you how much I completely LOVE the background - there are SO MANY of my very favourite prints there, and I had such a great time digging through my texty-scraps to piece everything together.  

For the triangle block, I copied Katy's idea from her 'Floating Triangles Wall Hanging' in the fab Fat Quarterly 'Shape Workshop for Quilters' book.  The floating triangle has been on my list of want-to-makes ever since I saw it in the book, so I was really happy to sew one up now. 

I so love the fabric in the middle of the wonky star - I saw it on the teapot in the Sew Ichigo Parisienne Cafe pattern photos and asked Penny on instagram where she had bought it - Sew Me A Song, if you are keen to buy some too!! 

I think this may be my absolute favourite little section of the whole mini.  That cat newsprint fabric just gets me - and the grumpy Fish & Chips cat is just so awesomely bored and irritated.  And I had an idea to make a tiny little checker-board-squares block.  Each square started life at 1-inch - so the whole thing is teeny-tiny.  I was SO careful cutting out the gnoma, 'play', 'life' and the little cat-face ... it seems my fussy-cutting obsession is never completely at rest ... as if I could slice through a gnoma ... 

The bottom right corner had to be a signing-off 'x' gnoma-kiss to Ryan, sandwiched inside Violet Craft's Madrona Road 'memoirs'. 

On the back is a Riley Blake print by Lori Holt of Bee in My Bonnet, and our label, some cute twill tape a little piece of 'C' ribbon. 

This is the first quilt I've made for myself to keep!  I am going to hang it on the wall in my sewing space.  It measures 23 x nearly-21 inches.  I am so very happy with it.  Thanks so much Jennifer for hosting the challenge, I am so happy to be part of it, and I am looking forward to seeing what everyone makes!   

Have a great day everyone.  xoxo cat