.: Teeny Weeny Swap :.

A few of the Brisbane MQG girls were lucky enough to score a spot in the Teeny Weeny Swap, which was originally just between Vancouver MQG and Greater Western Sydney MQG.

The main requirement for the swap was teeny weeny piecing - we could make tiny mini's, a spectacle case, needle book, or a collapsible thread-catcher.  My partner was Samantha and I was really happy  to sew with her preferences for a mini with plums, greens, teals, text prints, Amy Butler and AMH.  From memory (as this was before Christmas!) - Samantha also specifically mentioned that she liked Sew-Ichigo's strawberry - so my decision was very easy, as I love the strawberry too! 

The mini measures about 8 1/2 inches square, and is bound in an AMH print, with an Amy Butler butterfly on the back. 

I even made a little label, out of Terra Australis prints.

And this piece of gorgeous is what Samantha made for me!  Isn't it fabulous?!

I just LOVE it and couldn't believe it was mine, when the Teeny Weeny goodie box was opened up at our MQG end-of-year lunch in December.  It truly is a gorgeous mini, in my favourite colours + text prints, and is something I would have chosen to make for myself.  Just perfect.  Do you spy the teeny heart in the centre?  Thank you Samantha! 

And I thought I would share how I made the strawberry panel - since I never ever actually remember to take process-pics, but for some reason managed to take them this time.  The strawberry-body had to be made from teeny weeny pieces, and so I followed the Stamp Collection block tutorial on Elizabeth Hartman's Oh Fransson blog.

I made a templastic template for the 'body' of the strawberry - and you can see I've marked on the template, where the 'complete' squares would be, so I could double-check I wasn't cutting any particular fussy-cuts in half - because half-bodies and half-heads just drive me crazy!  Each square was cut *I think* 1 1/2 inches - maybe only 1 inch.  I laid them onto a piece of interfacing in a 6 x 5 grid, and slowly ironed them on. 

Once the interfacing was ironed on, I sewed each row together, and snipped the seams open (remembering this is all according to Elizabeth's tutorial - click on the link above).

And then the rows are sewed together running the other way, and seams snipped open.  Here's the completed panel from the back, with all seams snipped and ironed open. 

Here's the completed panel - I then laid the plastic template on top and carefully cut around it to create the strawberry-body, and carried on with the piecing. 

I made the leaves and stalk out of low volume fabrics, so the leaves could say "teeny strawberry", but then forgot to sew the background in greens + teals and just carried on with the low volume ... so the leaves don't pop out as much as I'd hoped.  The "teeny" comes from HappySewLucky Berene's "Improv Adjectives" Spoonflower prints - I was very happy to find "teeny" in this awesome fabric, as Berene (who was then in Vancouver MQG but is now in Toronto) was the original co-ordinator of the swap (along with Lorena from GWSMQG). 

I added in a little HST border to bring in the greens + teals that I had forgotten in the background. 

This was a really fun swap to be a part of, and some wonderful things were made.  We hadn't all realised that it was a direct swap - until we all opened up our little packages at our Christmas lunch - and that was such a happy discovery for everyone.  Thanks to Lorena and Berene for coordinating it, as well as Kelly from Brisbane MQG, and of course to Samantha for the gorgeous mini! 

xoxo cat