I recently stumbled upon the V and Co Ombre Mini Swap that Nicole Daksiewicz @modernhandcraft, Chris Thompson @the_tattooed_quilter,  and Nydia Kehnle @nydiak have announced. I really like the concept – finish the mini, then get a partner.  No extras (whew, no additional pressure!)!  This is going to be pretty great!

I have a jelly roll and a 1/2 yard bundle in my stash, but I saw that Pink Castle Fabrics had a fat 1/8ths bundle for $15 and decided to get that for the swap project.

The PCF bundle was 12 fabrics (taken in horrible light, of course, sigh):

I decided to do some foundation paper piecing for my mini that I found on 627handworks a few months ago. I chose her Mercury pattern, enlarged it a bit, chose 8 colors, and got to work.  It has been a while since I’ve done FPP, so first I had to get my brain engaged, rip out the first seam I stitched (pretty side OUT on piece #1, Julie), then I got down to business.  There was a fair bit of ripping out but I finished all 8 of the segments tonight, and I’m very happy about that.

This is not the final layout, it’s just the order I sewed them in, so I still need to rearrange them a little before I sew them together.

I had leftover ombre fabric of each color and they’re all cut in 6″ squares – I can make a 2nd mini if I so choose.  We’ll just see about that.

Be sure to check out the minis that are popping up on IG:  #ombreminiswap 

Another bit of fun for this Sunday Stash post is this (not in my normal wheelhouse) awesome fabric that is soon to be my Betsy Travel Bag by Kristi McDonough aka @schnitzelandboo (and by ‘soon’ I mean ‘before the end of the year’). Kristi is wicked talented and I’m pumped to make this awesome bag.  And if this one goes well, I may be making a couple more for the little people in my life.  Fingers crossed!

In order of appearance, it’s Essex Linen, Fruit Blossoms Fruit Drops (Melody Miller, Cotton+Steel), Lucky Strikes Score Card (Kimberly Kight, C+S), Elizabeth Tent Stripe (Tula Pink…my FIRST EVER TP fabric purchase.  For realz, yo!), Fruit Blossoms Dottie’s Friends (Melody Miller, C+S).

I can’t even tell you how far out of my norm these fabrics are, but I’m really excited about them and know they’ll make a rockin’ bag!  Now if I could just find the right thread to use I could really get underway.  I have slowly been cutting out the pieces and getting the interfacing on.  This is going to be a marathon, I believe!  But it will be worth it in the end!

Linking to Mary Emmens who is guest hosting for Molli Sparkles this week while he drinks his way around San Francisco!

PS – This is my 200th post.  Pretty cool, considering I started this blog for a way to track my projects.  And here I am, a few years later, doing things (bags, zippers) that I couldn’t have imagined doing when I started this.  Yay, Me!  🙂