Modern Mini Challenge

The Modern Mini Challenge is hosted by Jennifer over at Ellison Lane Quilts, and as soon as she announced it I knew I'd be participating. I've only made one other mini wall quilt [for myself, I've made others that have been given away], and it was just recently for the Tangerine Tango Challenge. I guess I'm all about the challenges lately?

Well I plum ran out of time to make the mini I had planned. Which I will still be making. But later.

So lately much of my thoughts and sewing time have been consumed by my pillow for round 7 of the Pillow Talk Swap. So I emailed Jennifer and asked if pillows counted, and she said sure why not, they're still mini! Yay! [And if I'm being honest, I've made this into a pillow, but if I were keeping it for myself then it would just exist on my wall, so that no crumbs or boy germs would get on it! Maybe my partner won't like it ;) ]

So I present to you:

"Twirling Clamshells"

Size: 20" square

The clamshells are made of 54 different blue, green, gray, and a single yellow fabric[s]. There are 18 clamshells total, and the hardest part about this was trimming it down into a square. I don't think I breathed the entire time I was cutting!

I also had a really difficult time quilting this. Or rather, deciding how to quilt. I thought I had the coolest idea when I decided to use a tracing wheel to trace out my clamshell template and quilt those shapes over the borders. But I hated how it looked, so I ripped it out after I did a side.

The center has to be the focal point, of course, with all that fabric deliciousness happening, so I kept it simple with straight-line quilting in the gray. And then I tried out several more quilting ideas. And then I spent over an hour ripping it all out. Finally I decided to do some free motion triangles in the top portion of the clamshell and pebble quilting in the next portion.

I'm utterly pleased with how this turned out [actually, I'm a little terrified that the quilting ruined the great piecing design], and both happy and sad to send it off to my partner in a few days. After it sits next to my sewing machine for a bit :)

Ps, I finished this at night so had to wait until this morning to take a picture. Well, I woke up to freezing rain, so I got soaked, and the pictures aren't even good because of the terrible lighting out. Figures!

And now I'm off to a wedding! :)