I hope y’all have been having a wonderful summer! My summer has been rather uneventful, but I’ve been keeping busy. My office was nice enough to let me work remotely from my parent’s house in Virginia for a few weeks, so I spent the bulk of July in Fairfax County, enjoying a break from the Texas heat. I only took my hand-piecing with me, so I made good progress on it while there. It was so nice sitting on my parents’ front porch with my pups, hand sewing! My pom poms love visiting grammy and especially love her porch. My Itsy bear is content wandering the porch inspecting things, but Miss Liberty thinks she is a human and insists she either be on the table (seen below), on a lap, or on her own chair. With that face, who could say no?!

Here is a look at the progress I’ve made on the Golden Wedding Ring. Five down, a zillion more to go!

This summer I also participated in my very first craft swap on Instagram. If you don’t follow me yet you can find me @mustlovequilts. I have several friends who are big swappers and I honestly never thought I’d get into it, I have so many projects going on at once it just wasn’t in the cards. I realized though that I’m always so busy with my own projects I don’t take enough time to interact with folks outside of my local guilds, so I figured swapping would be another way to get to know other crafty folks around the country. I joined “The Animal In You” swap, where participants would swap three crafty items based on their partner’s favorite animals. My partner listed a handful of animals in her mosaic so I set out to create a diverse mix of gifts for her. She has received the package so I can share my creations with you!

First up is a little crochet elephant. The pattern is by Mari-Liis Lille and you can find it on Ravelry. I just love how the designer uses fabric on the inside of the ears. I busted out some of my Bonnie & Camille fabric that I thought paired well with the teal I chose for the body color. She is pretty small and fits in the palm of your hand. I haven’t crocheted much since picking up quilting, and it was nice to work on a little crochet project again!

Next up some little buggers I needle-felted. Again, I haven’t needle-felted in ages but it was so fun to jump into again. My full-time job is rather stressful, and there is something about stabbing a little ball of wool 8 million times that relieves a little bit of stress. I’m reobsessed with this and have been breaking out the needle felting in the evenings when I don’t have the mental capacity to quilt. I have a little flamingo I’ve been working on I hope to share soon. The guys below are tiny, less than 2 inches probably. The rooster is based on a clay rooster I saw on pinterest and the owl is just a mixture of various needle felted owls I’ve seen over the years.

Last but not least is the Squirrel mini-quilt. I found an awesome Japanese advertisement on pinterest by Norito Shinmura and knew I had to recreate it with fiber. Be sure to check out his website for more of his awesome work, he is amazing. I changed his chipmunk into a squirrel and used glue applique and dissolving paper to create the mini. I happened to have some awesome teal woodland fabric in my stash, and really cool teal woodgrain fabric for the binding.

The fun thing about swaps is not only do you get to enjoy making things for another person, you get stuff in return! I was super lucky to receive awesome gifts from @mrslorichandler. I’ve always had a thing for flamingos and her mini is just too fun. I was obsessed with koalas as a child and just love the little koala pin cushion. Don’t even get me started on the kitten needle-book! I’m already getting tons of use out of it. 🙂

Some of you will be happy to know I’ve been working on some new patterns and tutorials. I have another Moda Bake Shop tutorial coming up later this month, and a freebie pattern I hope to post soon as well. I also finally got some decent pictures taken of my Sunshine Tiles quilt and I have that pattern in the works. Here is one of the photos that was photo-bombed by my lovely little Annabelle. She doesn’t get to play in the guest room, so she took advantage of the open door, which quickly got shut once I shooed her out!

That’s all for now! Thanks for checking out what I’ve been up to this summer. I leave you with a picture of my other cat, enjoying quilts almost as much as I do!

Piece Out,

Corinne