Tulip Mini Quilt for ALQS7

It's been a long time since I've had a chance to work on many personal projects as I've been very busy the last 2 months with the Taylor Bridge project, but I had to take time out to participate in Kate's ALQS7 as I absolutely love how her swaps work!

For those not familiar, usually you're assigned a partner in a swap like this, and there's always worry and strife about whether the recipient will love your final product. There's also the stress about meeting the deadline, or what to do if someone gets sick and has to drop out. Not so with Kate's swap! There is a deadline to get the photo to her, and as long as you make that deadline you're in. If you can't make it, no worries, you just won't participate in that round. She then lets all the participants send her a list of their favorite quilts among those submitted, and she has the difficult task of divvying them all up...but she does a fabulous job and we appreciate all her hard work!

So here is my little quilt. The challenge this round was to make a 12" mini quilt. Yikes! I started on a tiny little Hawaiian Applique piece but abandoned it as I decided my design wasn't good enough (self designed, first attempt). Maybe another time....then I had an idea to use some of my collection of Australian fabrics, but before I had a chance to do anything with them I got a Craftsy email with a free pattern for a 10" Paper Pieced Tulip block. Hmm...10" block + 1" border = 12" mini quilt. Score!

The batiks proved to be difficult to photograph, and in editing the colors to make the tulips, leaves and borders look right I ended up washing out the aquas. Here I've added some extra photos to show how the background looks.

I also wanted to give a shout out to my friend Shelley (aka Pirate) for her great Freezer Paper Piecing tutorial. I love it, and refer to it every time I need to paper piece something like this!

Sadly, Blogger ate half of my original post so I may have to come back later and add some forgotten details, but here are the rest of the photos in the meanwhile...