Let’s talk about the Cotton and Steel Mini Quilt Swap. Again, you say? Yes, we already posted about the mini quilt we made for our secret partner for this swap on Instagram. But then the call came for swap angels. A swap angel is someone who steps in and makes a mini quilt for someone whose original partner was unable to complete the swap for whatever reason. Swap angels receive nothing in return for creating this second gift. It’s just a goodness of the heart kind of thing! So we answered the call to be a swap angel.
The mini quilt we made this time used a block called snail’s trail. We started with a four patch square and then started adding triangles on each side. There is probably a better, more scientific, more correct way to do this than the way we did, but in the end, we ended up with a snails trail mini quilt.
We didn’t have very much time to figure out the likes and dislikes and quilt personality of our new recipient, but we did find a photo of several mini quilts she had made in her Instagram profile page, and saw that she used a black border in several of her mini quilts. They are all beauties!
So we adopted that idea and used a black border to separate the snail’s trail blocks from the border. We also used black for the back and brought it around to the front for a binding.
Aria suggested the parallel lines following the original snail’s trail path, and it looks so amazing quilted!
The back is even more fun; the little kids called it a maze and kept trying to trace the path along the snail’s trail with their fingers.
Now any good swap has extras, so we decided to send along the 2 handmade goodies for the Selfish Swap. (Guess that didn’t end so selfishly after all!)
This is the other Curvy Clutch we made using orange suede fabric for the accent trim. It’s a free pattern, so we’ll be able to make ourselves another one.
Also the other little turtle pincushion went in this package. We also sent our partner (@thesistyuglers on Instagram or Marthe in real life!) a fat quarter of Cotton and Steel cat fabric, and a tiny wooden box filled with vintage thread spools.
Even though this Cotton and Steel Mini Quilt was made in a very short time frame, we tried to make it very special for Marthe. After all, it wasn’t her fault her original partner backed out. And you know what? This mini quilt was even harder to send off than the first one we made! But when Marthe received it, she was very grateful and loved everything, so we are glad we sent it to her.
