Sew Cute Tuesday – Riddle & Whimsy

Hello! I’m Jo, Alyce’s guest blogger today for Sew Cute Tuesday! You can find me regularly blogging over at Riddle and {Whimsy}! I grew up being surrounded with quilting as my mum is a quilter but have only started doing it myself over the last few years. Since joining the online quilting community, I’ve become completely addicted to Instagram (I’m @riddlingwhimsy over there) and in recent months I have been involved in way too many mini quilt swaps — but they’re so much fun, I just can’t help myself! This year alone, I’m already in 5 of them including hosting one myself, yikes!

Alyce has posted about being in the Disney Mini Quilt Swap before, and I was in this swap too! I ended up making two mini quilts for the swap as I also made an “angel” mini (filling in for someone who dropped out).

My official partner is a huge fan of Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc and I used an image of the doors from a poster as the quilt design. You can read more about this mini, and see how I also turned the back into a Monsters Inc reference (and see what I received in the swap) over on my blog post. The partner I was allocated to make an angel quilt for listed Dumbo as one of her favourites. Due to previous ideas of symbolising elephants with triangles for another quilt on my mind (which is detailed in my post about this mini) so I made the Pink Elephants on Parade using some of my partner’s favourite fabric designers. So far this has been my most favourite swap that I have participated in as I really had a lot of fun trying to interpret the “Disney” theme.

More recently, I’ve finished up two more minis for swaps ending within the next few weeks.

This one is for #igminioz, a generic/no-theme swap for Australians. I’ve been finding the generic swaps a little harder as there is so much more choice in fabrics and designs to draw inspiration from. I’ve been finding the themed ones more freeing as I at least have a base to start with for ideas!

Another themed swap I’ve participated in is The Kitten Mini Quilt Swap. As a cat lover, I just had to join fellow cat lovers in making cat themed quilts! I’m not a paper-piecing fan (I actually kind of hate it!) but I managed to do a little of it to put the cat’s body together. I’m quite pleased with how this one has come out and can’t wait for my partner to get it!

Next on my list of swap minis to make are ones based on fabric designers.

Due first, is the Tula Pink Mini Quilt Swap. One of my WiP quilts is using the Birds and the Bees line from Tula Pink, and I’m turning the scraps into clamshells to make this Tula Clamshell mini for my partner. I actually need to finish piecing that quilt now, so I can have the rest of the scraps from it so I can start putting this one together!

I’m hosting the Lizzy House Mini Quilt Swap and have already started this mini from the Prismatic Medallion pattern for my partner. Having the top nearly together means I have plenty of time to figure out how to quilt it and how to bind a hexagon shape!

The third designer swap is for Anna Maria Horner but I haven’t started on that mini yet. Another Anna Maria Horner based swap I’ve done recently though, is a charm swap hosted by Ms Midge.

In the charm swap, we have over 100 different Anna Maria Horner fabrics and I’m putting them together to make this glorious colourful mess of a quilt!

A few other different swaps I’ve done are block swaps and a Round Robin! The Round Robin is with seven other ladies throughout Australia and New Zealand, and we’ve named ourselves Possum Magic. We only have a couple of months left before our own quilts are returned so we’re at the “exciting” end of the rounds with the final two borders left to add.

Everyone else started with square centres which have had four borders added to each round like a more traditional medallion, but I like to be different and I provided a rectangle centre.

Last but not least, I participated in the Supernova Block Swap which officially ended quite recently.

This quilt is the last full sized quilt I finished, right on New Year’s Eve last year. It’s been too hot to be stuck under any quilts which is why I’ve jumped into mini making, but this one was well worth the effort to finish up! I wish it was easier to show off in photos, but I also quilted it with sparkly holoshimmer thread which makes it look even more amazing in real life! One day, this quilt will have a twin from Sarah as we made two sets of identical blocks to swap with each other and I can’t wait to see her version!

Well, that’s what I’ve been up to! Feel free to continue joining me over at Riddle and {Whimsy} for my quilting adventures! Now it’s time to share with us your latest projects – stitching, sewing, finished or progress – and don’t forget you can link directly to an Instagram pic instead if you like. You can use #sewcutetuesday and @blossomheartquilts to help us all find you over there too.

[inlinkz_linkup id=508652 mode=1]