La Passacaglia Mini Quilt

Hey, I'm actually posting twice in one week!  Imagine that! ;)

It's been an interesting start to 2015 - the typical post holiday calm, the somewhat expected but still lothesome stomach flue, the almost mild winter (compared to last year anyways), and the slow down on the sewing front post Christmas craziness.  But I do have my first finish of 2015 to show you!  

I stumbled upon the Schnitzel & Boo Mini Quilt Swap round 2 last summer on Instagram and I was smitten by all the beautiful quilts that were being created and shared.  I missed the sign ups for that round, but when sign ups for round 3 opened in November, I jumped at the chance to be a part of a mini quilt swap with 950 awesome quilters from around the world!  I was lucky enough to be assigned a lovely lady over in England to make a quilt for!  I had fun stalking her and after a bit of sleuthing, I noticed that one of her wish list quilts was the La Passacaglia quilt.  It's an amazing English paper pieced quilt made up of several interlocking wheels that have a very kaleidoscope like effect.  There has been a plethora of gorgeous variations of this quilt popping up on Instagram and it is definitely a quilt pattern that I have became fascinated with but didn't know if I would ever have a reason to make one.  

I have also been intrigued by English paper piecing (EPP) for some time but again didn't have a reason to actually learn how to do it.  Well, I decided to see if I could learn how to not only English Paper Piece, but also take on a small version of the La Passacaglia quilt for my partner.  I'll admit, it's an extremely ambitious project to do especially for a beginner. But once an idea gets in my head, I tend to jump off the deep end.  Sink or swing, right?
So I ordered the book that has the La Passacaglia pattern in it and set about trying a few less ambitious EPP projects to make sure I could even figure this out.  I made this cute hexi snowflake mug rug for a quilty pen pal:

This hexi snowflake mug rug for a dear friend and mentor:

This Pentagon ball as a gift for my younger son for Christmas:

And this teeny pin cushion for myself:

Once I figured out this EPP thing, I loved it and decided to take the plunge and make one of the wheels from the La Passacaglia quilt as a mini quilt for my swap partner. 
Thankfully. I wrapped up my Christmas sewing a few days before Christmas so I was able to get the whole mini quilt cut out before we left for our Christmas road trip to see our families between Christmas and New Years.  

 This kind of hand work turned out the perfect thing to bring with me on our trip.  I was able to work on it quite a bit during the evenings and nap times when is adults were all sitting around chatting and catching up.

By the time I got home, I had gotten this far on it:

 It was turning out better than I had hoped.  I posted a progress photo on Instagram and it's always a huge reassurance to get such great feed back from fellow quilters.  Especially when one one of those fellow quilters happens to be the person you are making it for yet they don't know its for them but they tell you that they love it! It's fun!

 Over the next two weeks, I spent nearly every minute of down time sewing my fingers off and working on nothing else in order to get it done in time for the shipping dead line.

But of coarse, the week of the shipping dead line, the stomach flue struck me and Little Bear and it was BAD!  Bear and I did nothing but be sick for 3 days straight and it was nearly a week before we were back to normal.  Once I started to feel better, I was able to finish up the quilt.  I even did a little quilty math and made EPP templates to make the boarder around the edge of the finished La Passacaglia wheal.  Thankfully, I had a very understanding swap mama who gave me the time to finish it up properly.

 It seemed to take Forever to get all of the papers out of the back of the quilt especially since I glue basted the papers and some of them didn't want to let go very easily.

 Here it is all basted and ready for quilting!! I was a little giddy when I reached this point as I had put in so many house all ready and finally finally I could see the end!

 I decided to quilt it in a dense straight line quilting that radiated from the center of the quilt.  I love the texture the dense quilting gave the quilt.

 Unfortunately, the sun decided to never come out the one afternoon I had a chance to properly photograph it so the photos turned out a bit darker than I would have liked.  But still - I can't get over how well this quilt turned out!!  Sqeee!!!

 As an added little something extra to the quilt, I decided to piece together a back that was inspired by another quilt on my partner's wish list and by some of her favorite fabrics. It's pretty enough to be its own quilt.

I ended up having a little extra time the evening before I mailed out my partner's box, I made her this super cute little hexi pincushion as an extra.  I love that I had a pair of vintage buttons in my button jar that accented the pin cushion perfectly!  

Overall, this was probably the most elaborate and labor intensive quilt I've ever made.  It was so hard to let it go as I really wanted to keep it for myself because of not only the hours and hours that I had poured into making this mini quilt, but also, I have fallen so in love with how gorgeous this quilt turned out.  However, it was a little bit easier to let it go knowing that based on the comments my partner has left on the photos I've posted on Instagram, I'm pretty sure she is going to love it!

 My husband sweetly told me that I could make myself one.....I'm not likely to get that kind of motivation any time soon.  For now the pictures will have to do.