I made this mini quilt for the Rainbow Mini Swap on instagram. I started with a backing fabric designed by one of my partner’s favorite fabric designers, and I only just realized I didn’t take a picture of it! Here are the fabrics I used for the front though. I matched the lightest blue and the orange to the backing fabric and went from there.

This is a paper pieced pattern called Mercury, which is available for free on Craftsy.

Doesn’t the back look great!

Once the inside star was together I really loved it!

The borders had a lot of pieces but also came together quickly. The borders are called Goosing Borders and this is also a free pattern you can get on Craftsy.

The finished the mini with a black, gray, and white fabric for the binding and I love it. This was quilted with white Aurifil thread and I did a stitch in the ditch around the triangles in the borders and in an octagon shape around the center star.

Mercury Rainbow
18×18

The story has a sad ending though, because after I packed it up with a magazine, some extra fabric, and some French salted caramels, the only thing that arrived at my Rainbow Swap partners house was an envelope with a large cut in it. The post office here had nothing to say about it, and there was nothing they could do. I made the mistake of not insuring it, and the post office where my swap partner lives couldn’t tell anything either. It’s such a huge disappointment when something like that happens and I hope that someday it is found.

Vote for my quilt in the Blogger’s Quilt Festival Mini Quilt category! This is a twice a year online quilt festival, hosted by Amy at Amy’s Creative Side.

A handful of years ago I happened to meet an amazing group of women online. I’ve always loved reading blogs and I found a couple that were written by military spouses, not the super popular ones, not the ones that ended up with thousands of comments, or book deals, but my new friends were smart and they were writing awesome things. But even better, for me, they were women I could relate to. Without getting into the whole military spouse of it all, the women I met through those blogs are still my friends, and I’ve even met a couple of them in person.

A few years ago this particular group of friends organized a secret Valentine swap, something fun and easy for us to do, and this year, once I got her name, I knew I had to make something awesome for my friend Charity. She graduated with her PhD this year, after working crazy hard to finish, while not being able to live with her active duty husband. I went in search of finding more details out about what she studies, how she fell in love with science, and I happened to find that it was a video about volcanos she watched at a young age that drew her to geology. I knew I had to incorporate that into whatever I made for her.

I’ve never made a pixel quilt and figured this was a great time to try. I found a volcano picture online, pixelated it, and set out to figure out how to make this come together. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, and I finally mailed the box containing a large mini quilt and a few treats from France in April. So a bit later than Valentine’s day for sure, but I know she loved it.

The quilt label I use has a few lines for me to add who I made something for and any other details. I included this quote on the back:

Give me silence, water, hope
Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes.

Pablo Neruda

Volcano pixel art quilt
30 x 24

Vote for my quilt in the Blogger’s Quilt Festival Art Quilt category! This is a twice a year online quilt festival, hosted by Amy at Amy’s Creative Side.