This month's theme was "beach/underwater".
My approach to these minis is to get to know my partner a bit and then design something for them. At the beginning of the month, Karen and I chatted about what we like at the beach. She said she liked to sit and listen to the waves, build sandcastles, and collect seashells.
I used flickr to pull together some images I thought represented those things. I added them all to my favorites and then used Big Huge Labs to make a mosaic for inspiration. I printed the mosaic and took it fabric shopping with me. I bought the fabric and designed the quilt in my head simultaneously. When I got home I sketched the design.
Here is the front of "Seaside".
I had plans to add a sandcastle along the shoreline off to one side, but when it came time to do it, it just didn't work for me.
I did find this awesome seashell fabric at Joann for the back.
Remember how I discovered how to do circles recently? (See here and here.) Well! I tried the same method on ovals and it works. What do you think of my label?
Remember the quilting website I told you about in this post? Well, I used the Echo Shell pattern in the sky. The water was something I came up with on my own. The sand is just basic stippling that you can find just about anywhere.
I added a few beads to the umbrella.
Don't you like my seagull? I think he's pretty rockin'.
I tried a few new things with this mini quilt.
- If you look closely at the seagull and umbrella images you can see I used clear thread. I really liked using it. I'll do a post talking a little bit about what I used and why I liked it soon.
- I found some fusible fleece for super cheap at the thrift store a while back. I used it for batting on this one and really liked it. I made my quilt sandwich like this: Fusible fleece fused to back side of quilt top; fusible web used to attach quilt back. It worked really well! I didn't have any puckers at all!
