31 Days - Day 21: Mini madness

In 2003 I was part of a Secret Pals exchange through the World Wide Quilting Page (which isn't where you would think it is if you googled it; the archived page is still there, but the active pages moved over to blogger, of all places). One of the participants matched us up with someone to whom to send packages, along with a different, unknown person to send to us.

Make no mistake, it was all about the gifts. We filled out interest sheets to be sent to our Pal to make their gift buying/making easier, and had set dollar limits and a once monthly package requirement. We didn't have much attrition; it was helpful that if you hadn't received a package for the month, you could post something gently shaming like "Gee, I wonder if my pal has had health issues, I haven't seen anything from her this month..." on the board.

Quilters are a great group - we had very few problems.

The pal I was assigned lived in England (I had received packages from a different person in Great Britain the year before, so I volunteered to deal with the extra postage the following year). She had mentioned she liked miniature quilts, so I found a book, thinking, "How hard can this be?"

Right.

Pink ribbon miniature quilt

The final dimensions of the mini are roughly 16 x 16. The individual blocks finish at 3 1/2 inches. The individual blocks that make up the ribbon blocks (there are five smaller blocks across and down in each of the ribbon units) finish at 1/2 inch.

Yikes. It was a hoot dealing with all those tiny pieces, shortening the machine stitch to almost zero so that the half square triangles were held together by more than three stitches.

As darling as this little wall quilt is, I will never replicate it. My eyes are ten years older and may not be up to the task.