Fairy Tale Swap–a finish!

Last week I showed you the extra handmade item for this swap, a project book from Aneela Hooey’s pattern.  Today I have the main swap item to share.  This is my Princess and the Pea mini-quilt called Wide Awake!

I signed up for the #SPDFairytaleswap on Instagram and the shipping date was last week so I’ve been paper piecing, making templates, trying out some fancy stitches on my new machine trying to make a Princess and the Pea mini in perspective!

My partner  loves bright, happy fabrics, no browns or muted colours so I chose some layer cake squares from Me and My Sister’s Hubba Hubba collection.  I designed the bed in EQ7 and foundation paper pieced the mattresses.

For the canopy, I drew it on blank paper following the lines of the mattresses and used the sides as templates to cut pieces.  I  backed the pieces with fusible web to iron in place and used fusible for the bed posts too.

I had the idea that while the Princess was trying to sleep on her collection of mattresses, a little dog would be curled up in his tiny bed snoring his head off!

I sketched out a dog based very much on Charly when she is all curled up and then used fabric backed with more fusible paper to put him and his bed together.  His name is Toby (Toby was our very first dog.  He was very snuggly and loved to curl up!)

To give the impression of the Princess being wide awake I had the idea of her counting sheep.  Funnily enough this month’s Love Patchwork & Quilting Magazine has a jumping sheep mini-quilt with templates so it was really easy to make the sheep!  When the universe gives you exactly what you are thinking of I think its called synchonicity!

I had intended to put in a dressing table and crown and a window with the night sky but it was getting a bit big and a bit fussy so I stopped at that and embellished the bed, to make it fit for Royalty instead!

I had fun using some of the speciality stitches to add hearts, stars and fancy scrolling to the bed to make it more like something you would find in a castle!

Finally a bit of quilting in the background.  I’m sorry now I didn’t quilt in some bricks or some straight lines.  I thought a large wiggle would melt into the background and not compete with the bed but I don’t really like the look of it, maybe the scale is too big?  Other than that I’m happy with how it came out and hope my swap partner likes it and the rest of the swap package!

I found this Little Red riding hood fabric on LoveFabric.ie and just had to buy him.  Claire thought he was cool but a little creepy!  I agree and I really like the way he is licking his lips! 

So this lot is winging its way across the Atlantic at the moment.   It was a great idea for a swap and I had great fun making for it.  Linking up to the Friday Finishes!