Just fooling around!

Yikes! I feel like I haven't been very good to blog this last couple of weeks, which is reflective of my whirlwind life at the moment. But I **think** we are finally out of the woods on the family sickness front - its been one thing after the other here. All that stress has had its effect and I've been lacking a little creative energy lately. But last night I decided to try to work out an idea that has been in my head for quite a while and I finished it this evening - a little tiny mini quilt that I'm calling Floating Away. Isn't it pretty?

I love to doodle when I'm in meetings or on the phone and lately all I've been doodling was bunches of balloons. Plus, I have a great pic on my "Inspiration" board on Pinterest that I love looking at and return to time and again:

Source: wetbehindthears.com via Sarah on Pinterest

So I decided to try to do a ballon inspired fabric picture type and completely improvised as I went along. I saw a picture somewhere recently - a magazine? a blog? a pattern? I can't remember where - where there were circles emphasised with lines of quilting around them and I really loved the effect. I had some lovely embroidery threads in my sewing box that have a slight sheen - they're called Sulky and I thought they would be perfect. So I marked some circles on some scrap pieces using various glasses of different widths and cut them out and sewed around to give a raw edge applique, and sewed in the ribbon/string trailing from them. Then I started quilting the circles around the balloons. I deliberately went for a very "freehand" look in these quilting lines, crossing over lines, varying the widths - I wanted it to look light, breezy, unstructured and to have a bit of movement.

I used a poly batting which is a good deal thicker (width wise) than my normal cotton one but much lighter and airier in texture, it was interesting to quilt with. I was surprised by the cool raised effect it created under the balloons when I quilted the lines which makes it a little 3 dimensional. Isn't the thread nice too?

I also used it as an opportunity to practice FMQ on the white solid - my technique is getting better but very slowly - I still need to do lots of practice before I'd tackle a quilt. I like the effect though, it looks like the balloons are floating through clouds, even if its uneven in lots of places!

Please don't look too closely at the binding - I was too lazy and too anxious to finish to iron it so I finger pressed it and did it super quick so its not the best. But I don't really care, this little mini quilt makes me smile, its so cheerful! I'm going to hang it on the wall over the stairs so that I see it when I'm rushing downstairs in the morning when I always need a smile!

I'll be linking this up to some great blogs including www.todayscreativeblog.net and