Doll Quilt Swap 13 Finish! [alternatively titled My Dad is a Saint]

You guys, my dad saved the day! He spent a week manually finding files on my corrupt hard drive and transferring them to a DVD. Love him!

So thanks to my dad, I bring you my completed Doll Quilt Swap 13 mini that I sent to my partner!

She said that she loves purple and black and that she tends toward the traditional.

 

 

I said "Well crap, that's so far outside my comfort zone." But I came up with this mock-up and fabric pull, which got favorable reviews, and got to work!

I created my paper piecing templates by hand because my EQ software wasn't working well [foreshadowing for the failure of my computer, mayhaps?]. This mini required 48 paper piecing units! Phew! 

I was chugging away, assembly line style, when this happened:

What a sad moment, seriously. Paper piecing is very dull for me, so it takes all my internal oomph to keep going.

And oh my, those stripes. Those stripes! I've never paper pieced with directional fabric, and dagnabit it took me longer than I'd like to admit to figure out how to make the stripes line up correctly. But hey, it all worked out. And I actually really love the shape of just these pieces together, and want to revisit this design as its own block.

I do think that perhaps my purple fabric choices could have had a little more contrast so that you could better see the piecing inside each pinwheel. I didn't have a lot of purple to work with in the quantities that I needed, nor the ability to buy more. So that will be something that I change for next time!

Once I got the top assembled I was pretty stuck on how to quilt it. The seams were really bulky in the middle since I couldn't press them open, so I was afraid to quilt over them.

I opted for swirls in the large gray stripe area and free-motion straight lines in the small gray stripe areas.

You can see it much easier on the back!

While I had some issues with the overall project because it was my first real full quilting project with my new machine, I'm pretty pleased with how my idea came to life. Hopefully my partner will love it!

Quilt stats:
Apprimately 21"square
Fabric - Black and white polka dot from Joann, coral Bella solid, dark purple Art Gallery print, light purple Tula Pink print, gray and white Dear Stella stripe
Binding - Black and white polka dot from Joann
Quilting - free motion swirls and lines

*Linked with Finish it up Friday :)