Thursday 13 June 2013

.: 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

16 comments:

  1. love the label ... where do you get them made?
    it's high time i started "owning" my work!

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  2. Omg no words - this is too amazing. You are a superstar! xox

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  3. That is awesome! So cute, I totally love it!

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  4. Such a sweet Little quilt. Love the back part a lot ;-)

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  5. This mini is so cute! Love the words in it. I am working on mine. A little paper piecing.

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  6. I love it. I love all things "text." I have the hardest time buying text fabric, though. I always like it in things, but when I see it on the bolt, it doesn't do much for me. But I don't think I find all these fun ones that you have, either. LOL. Nice going!

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  7. I'm so glad to hear it is going on your wall, a perfect place for, "hey girl", I have a fussy cutting obsession too! and I love it!

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  8. Love it, this would make me smile everytime I looked at it, hanging on the wall is a perfect place for it :) Have a great time with your class, am sure everyone will come away full of enthusiasm and ready to create :)

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  9. Just love how you have done this Cat - the little details are perfect! The Hey Girl pics always make me laugh too!!!

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  10. Too cute! This is adorable. I love all the text prints and your color scheme!

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  11. really brilliant - such a cute quilt :-)

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  12. Everything about this mini is awesome, I think I may have squealed when I saw those little cats. Well done!

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  13. Love your mini! The colors are great and I love all your texty newsprint fabrics. I have a thing for them, too. This would make a perfect addition to my collection ;). Love the C ribbon, too!

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