Swapping, lesson learned

So I took the plunge and entered my first ever quilt swap the 3rd round of the Brit quilt swap. After several weeks of frantic sewing quilting and fretting my little baby (literally, the brief was a mini quilt) was posted on Saturday. Sitting mulling over the experience (accompanied by a chilled glass of rose) I wanted to record, mainly for my own benefit, lessons learned from the experience.
So what do I take away from this?
First off, yes I do tend to overcommit but that is not necessarily a bad thing, I was more than able to complete what was a quite complex quilt in the allotted time.
Secondly it's not the quilt itself which tripped me up but the peripherals which I did not consider until it was too late (well almost!)
What do I mean?
Well packaging for posting for a start, standing in Bonnybridge post office with half an hour till closing is not the best place to decide on what packaging to use.
Binding - I need to practice this, I do too much by machine and need to get hand sewn binding cracked.
Label!! Most of my quilts go to Project Linus so I do do much in the way of labels, I need to start, there were some beautiful labels in this swap, i must learn to do better ones.
But my partner loved it (well was polite enough to say she did :-) and I had great fun doing it. Here is the finished result.

 

And because I did two centers, one light and one dark, I had a spare with which to make a mini mini quilt.

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Swapping

It's been a while! Can't believe I haven't posted in August yet. Tsk tsk, I keep thinking I need to get better photographs, but if I wait till I am a better photographer then I will never post .... I am going on a course in October, fingers crossed that will improve things.
So I am dipping my quilting toes into the swapping waters. British Quilt Swap 3, it's a mini quilt.
I was intrigued by my partners mosaic and likes and dislikes. I quickly decided on a very traditional quilt. My partner mentioned she liked machine embellishments so the light bulb went off (doesnt happen often!) and the idea of the silk quilt centre from the Heirloom silk quilt crystallised.
So here is the progress, starting with all the different petals

 

 

 There are four different petals, you need to make four of each. I think my favourite are the lightest ones here. They are the most fun and least stressful to do.
Then you need to sew them all together in a circle.

The centre piece is next, I couldn't decide between the light centre

  Or the dark one

I let my partner decide, and dark it was



I have candlewicked round the outside and now just need to put on backing and binding. Oh yes must not forget the label!