I finished this mini for my partner in the Alison Glass swap on Sunday afternoon and I utterly, completely love it. In fact, I’m a little sad to be giving it away instead of hanging it on my own wall!
All of the fabrics — even the white, which has a white text print on it that doesn’t show up in the photos — are from Alison Glass‘s “sunprints” line. (The theme of the swap was to use her fabrics, in case that’s not obvious by now.) I love basically every print and every color in the whole line, but I chose to use the blues, greens, and purple because my partner indicated she liked them.
The pattern is the Rebel Quilt by Libs Elliott. I’ve been following her on Instagram for a while and wanting to make a Rebel of my own, and this swap seemed like a great opportunity to do just that. She has a free download on her site with the cutting dimensions needed to turn the full quilt into an 18″ square mini. I wanted mine to be just a tad bigger, so I made my own adjustments and this one finished at ~21″ square.
The pattern obviously requires a pretty high degree of precision in order to come out looking top notch, so I was really careful with my cutting and tried my very very best to maintain a good 1/4″ seam. Every single corner isn’t perfect but overall I was downright thrilled with the result. This is some of the most precise piecing I’ve ever done — and with such small pieces too!
I had a handful of half square triangles left over from the front, so I incorporated them into the back for a little bit of fun. Then I quilted it with two sets of diagonal lines, one set on each half of the mini. I originally planned to quilt it with a spiral pattern, but I chickened out at the last minute. I haven’t done any spiral quilting before and was too afraid of screwing something up after being so happy with the piecing!
My label was actually inspired by the mini that I received on Saturday as part of this same swap. I thought it was really cool how she incorporated a piece of folded fabric into the binding, with the third edge of the triangle hand stitched down to the backing — it looks so nice and neat! So when I started binding this mini that same afternoon, I used the same technique.
I wanted to include a fun extra in my package, so I whipped up an open wide zippered pouch (tutorial by Anna of Noodehead) using some of the leftover fabric plus a zipper I already had in my stash. This is the medium size pouch. This was a really easy project that only took about 30 minutes — a perfect swap extra!
I put a few more tiny goodies inside the pouch, including several 3″ squares of the fabrics I used in the mini. Hopefully my partner can find something fun to do with them!
While I have been proud of every item I’ve made for swaps thus far, this is by far my personal favorite. I so hope my partner loves it too!
So I love the zippy bag! I have taken to carrying big sack style bags — at work they make transition to school easy cause they can fit my laptop and a text book, and they have been great for commuting. But the problem is you really need a bag within the bag to be a catch all for things you don’t want to go digging for (keys, wallet, headphones, etc.). That looks perfect. Christmas is only 6 months away, just sayin’.
It’s beautiful. I love the pattern, and the fabric is perfect for it. The zippy bag looks great, too.
And Becca, always angling for handmade gifts!
🙂 I think you made sure I had my quota for a while
Wait, Jen has been sending you things and you’re still angling for more? And you didn’t even have a baby!! 😉
This mini is absolutely gorgeous! Your swap partner is so lucky!