Swoon Mini Quilt

Ok, so I know I've been hinting at this project but not really sharing much. I hate it when others post about secret projects and yet, I've done the same thing. Though this isn't for a magazine or book or anything. If I had something like that I would just keep it to myself.

Instead this mini is my reinterpretation of the Swoon block. I haven't seen any made like what I came up with and didn't want to give too many sneak peeks because I knew someone out there could whip this up faster than I could. And yes, in this case I wanted to be the first that I know of to share this take on it.

Now let's talk about the Swoon block itself. On the Swoon-a-long Flickr group there are many talking about failures and successes with this block. I found it to be a breeze to piece and didn't have issues with the HSTs being too small or anything. The points that aren't just right go with my design of it so I accept them. I did find it tedious to cut all the pieces but that's nothing new. When I do make the full size quilt (and I will one day, probably not this year), I will probably cut one block at a time and sew them up one at a time. That will break up the tedious part for me.

My mini started with this Swoon block as inspiration. Once I saw it I couldn't get sunflowers out of my head. I did try to find fabrics that were similar to the ones used but in the end am glad I couldn't find anything just right. The solids led me to playing around with FMQ some more. Let me just say that the brown area took hours! I enjoyed every minute of it but it was a lot of time invested. I would say the time spent quilting just that area and the time spent hand sewing the binding are about equal in length.

The quilting isn't that visable in the distant shot. It's pretty overcast (partly sunny the weatherman says, ha!) and if the lighting outside is better tomorrow, I will take another photo for my WIP Wednesday post.

It was Chad's suggestion that I bind it in brown. I showed him the mini prior to quilting and he was amazed, which is rare. Usually he doesn't want to see any of my projects until they are done because he tells me he can't see the final product like I can. (He loves almost everything I make so that's never a concern.) He at first thought I would bind in white and told me brown would be best. I honestly had not thought about that step yet but once I got there settled on it because I thought it worked best.

I backed it in a humingbird print that has flower names and other garden related words written on it. It doesn't match color wise but matches in theme. After making this, I could see so many color combinations to make all kinds of flowers.

I'm sure it is obvious as to which fabric cuts I switched out but if you have questions, I can update with the notes I made prior to cutting. I did sketch this out to make sure what I saw in my head would work. It was also useful in making a list of what to cut out of each fabric.

Feel free to use this as inspiration in your Swoon blocks (but please credit me if you share my photos). And if you're not one of the almost 800 members of the Flickr group, be sure to check it out. There are so many creative takes on this basic block. It really is veratile depending on the fabrics choosen.

I'm linking this up to Sew Modern Monday and also Fabric Tuesday. If you're visiting from either of those, thank you for stopping by!

Be back tomorrow with my WIP update. Have a great day!