Category: Quilting and Sewing

Last year a few of my friends and I decided to swap mini quilts as birthday gifts during the year.  It was a lot of fun to sew for one another and see the lovely gifts that resulted from our efforts.  This post contains photos of the mini quilts I made for my friends.

The first and second quilts I made were versions of my Mini Prosper quilt .  Kristin requested hers in Art Gallery fabrics (pictured above) and Jill loves purple, so I made them each one.  Somehow my pictures of the purple version have disappeared so I only have photos of the mini I made for Kristin.


I love this print on the back, and I especially love the goofy photo I snapped of my quilt holder when a gust of wind took us both by surprise!


When Pamela’s turn came, she didn’t want anything related to stars or dresdens and she liked low volume fabrics.  I decided to try the January Quilt Block by Lady Harvatine but it was larger than I wanted.  I reduced the measurements and tried again and ended with this mini quilt:


It’s a terrible photo, a bit blurry and with bad lighting – evidence that I finished it the same night I was to deliver it, hence a rushed picture snapped on my phone before I dashed out the door.  It seems I’m often on that kind of schedule when I’m sewing gifts.

Another late night finish (and resulting poor photo) came with Jennifer’s mini quilt.  She didn’t have many requests, so I thought about how much she loved watching the sky from the house she lived in.  At the time they were preparing to move so I made this quilt to remind her of the sunrises and sunsets she’s enjoyed from that place.


I particularly enjoyed making this one and would like to explore the sunrise theme and this color scheme again sometime.


For Anna I decided to use the Glitter quilt block from Jen Kingwell’s book, Quilt Lovely.  I chose a bright, happy color scheme and also did a little bit of fussy cutting.


It was a fun project and I’m happy with the results.  It also reminded me that I should get my own Glitter quilt blocks back out and finish that project!


It was a lot of fun to make these five (only four pictured, though) quilts for my friends. Sometimes I step back and marvel a little at the amazing women I’ve met because of this hobby.  I know it’s that way with most things we get involved in – we end up with friends and associates that we’re honored to know and learn from.  I love this group of women!

Next up will be the Birthday Mini Quilt Swap, Part 2, where I share all the pretty mini quilts these wonderful friends made for me!

I wrote here about my love for the Colorado Rocky Mountain Columbine.  Really, it’s one of my all-time favorite flowers, which was part of the reason I drew a larger version and embroidered it.  (You can find the FREE embroidery pattern for the columbine here .) I haven’t done much embroidery in recent years and I was a little rusty, so the flower was a fun project for me.  Once it was done, the question was what to do with my stitching?


Except that really, it wasn’t hard at all to decide once the idea hit.

You see, there’s another reason why the columbine is special to me and my family.  My youngest sister Kristen was a student at Columbine High School, and was at school the day of the shooting.  To say that day changed all of us would be an understatement, and it certainly changed her life more than the rest of us.

Last month brought the 18th anniversary of the shooting, so I used my columbine to make a mini quilt for Kristen.


I gathered some scraps left over from the quilt , found a solid that coordinated, and pieced together a simple design that complimented the flower.


I cut out the flower name from the State Flowerscape text print and top stitched it to the quilt.  For the backing I used a scrap from Heather Bailey’s Clementine collection and even thought to add little corners for easy hanging!


I also added a “you are loved” tag to the back when I added the binding.


This has been a project that was good for my soul, a reminder that light can always overcome darkness, that healing and hope are real, that God is mindful of us.

I’ve heard a song over and over again in my mind as I worked on this, “Columbine, flower blue, tenderly I think of you…..”


Life is precious.

The Rocky Mountain Columbine is Colorado’s state flower.

I was raised there, and loved it when I occasionally spotted columbines growing in the wild.  They are such beautiful flowers, fragile and dainty and yet also strong.  You would have to be to survive winter in the Rockies.  For some reason when I see or think of the columbine I feel hope.

I’ve seen columbines in many colors, but none are as beautiful to me as the blue-violet petals of the flower designated by Colorado.  I have grown columbines in my gardens over the years and have learned that they’re hardy but also susceptible to aphids.  In the seasons the aphids have been bad, I’ve had an almost irrational need to make sure my columbines survive.  I love these flowers.


The years I’ve spent quilting have taught me something about the way my brain works.  While occasionally I learn/make something and quickly move to something else, what happens more often is a tendency to have lots of closely related ideas come to mind, and a desire to explore them is strong.

So it shouldn’t be surprising, I suppose, that after making that fun State Flowerscape quilt , I couldn’t leave my favorite state flower alone.  I drew a larger version of the flower and went to work embroidering it.  My embroidery skills are a little rusty but it worked.


I’ve already sewn this piece into a project and given it away, but I have plans to revisit this design and use it in a future project.  For the sake of my own sanity I’ve written a simple pattern and if you’d like to download a copy as well, you’re welcome to it!

Download Columbine Embroidery Pattern Here Hope you enjoy it.  I’ll share photos tomorrow of what mine turned into.