Kaffe Fasset Mini Quilt: A Quilt Swap

I've never participated in a quilt swap before but one of the quilt shops I keep up with, Intown Quilters in Decatur, GA, is hosting a Kaffe Fassett mini quilt challenge and swap. This is all in conjunction with Kaffe's upcoming birthday and it sounded like great fun.

I knew right away that I wanted to make some sort of wild raw edge applique flower.

Then I was gifted with these lovely flowers and my color inspiration was found.

The final dimensions for the quilt have to be somewhere between 12 inches x 12 inches and 24 inches x 24 inches. I taped together four pieces of standard card stock and settled on something around the 18 inch mark. The flower was quickly sketched and I started wondering if it was going to look like a flower or some sort of single celled microscopic thing but moved forward anyway.

It can get a little messy in the sewing room when you are looking for just the right combination of fabric for a project.

This set ended up as the winning combination. I probably took seven or eight different pictures of what I thought was the "final" set, then would walk away for a while and come back to make one adjustment or another.

I did not have a big enough piece of anything Kaffe for a suitable background so I constructed one from a couple of different prints. That center square will be fully covered up by the flower so it really did not matter what went there.

To cut out each layer of the flower, I simply lay the cut out cardstock template on top of the fabric, pinned it down, and cut it out with scissors. It did not have to be perfect so it was a quick and easy way to get it done. This is after the first layer was complete and the template was cut down to the next layer.

After two layers.

Three layers.

Four layers.

Five layers.

Six layers. And I decided I really did not like that center. That is easy enough to fix.

Much better with just five layers. I'm glad I fussy cut that center. This is all laid out as a dry run. Nothing has been stitched at this point.

To hold each layer of fabric in place for stitching, I lightly sprayed the back of each layer with some 505 temporary adhesive spray. It worked great and avoided the stiffness that using fusible webbing can sometimes create. I worked from the outside in and stitched approximately one half inch from the edge. Again, this did not have to be perfect. I was a little nervous about those center layers since they would be stitched through so many layers of fabric (five layers of fabric, batting, and backing for the center) but it stitched very easily.

The only quilting is some free motion leaves at each corner and a few curls to add some interest. I got a little over confident and went straight to stitching with an olive thread and a completely inappropriate leaf design. So after five minutes of stitching and an hour of unstitching, I did a little bit of drawing and switched over to a lime green thread before starting again. Much better.

I used scraps from the flower layers for the binding.

I think the colors are pretty true to their inspiration. All of the pictures up to this point are before washing and drying the quilt.

Here is how it looks after washing. Just the results I was hoping for!

If I have any regrets about this project, it is that I did not try harder on the back. I just went with whatever I had that would not require piecing. It is still pretty, just not a great complement to the front.

I made this label for it, which I will print and hand stitch to the back before sending it off to the shop. It is nice they are allowing out of towners to participate. I won't receive a mini quilt back until after the first of the year. The shop will be displaying all of them throughout December. Maybe I will be able to make a special trip to see the display. The shop is about an hour and a half from home.

Here it is on the back deck, out in the bright sunshine. Fall has set in solidly here in Georgia, so the bright colors really stand out among all the brown, gold, and green of fall.

Thanks, Intown Quilters, for giving me a reason to play with my Kaffe stash. I hope the recipient of this little quilt loves it as much as I do.

Other posts about mini-quilts:
Faith, Family, and Friends
Scrappy Blue Kaffe Quilt 
Shadow Blocks Mini: A Finished Quilt 

Linking up with Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times and Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt. Also linking up with Design Board Monday at Bits 'n Bobs and Work In Progress Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. More link ups... Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, and Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts.