Woolly Mini Full Frontal

I don't think I've ever been so excited to share my work as I am today. Nannette received her Birdhouse Fence woolly mini today, so that means I can share it with you, too! It brought me great joy to make this - after waiting way too long to start my swap project, suddenly it all came to me in a great rush (perhaps fueled by the guilt of procrastination?). Actually, I think I knew that one day my photos of the real life birdhouse fence would end up in fibre. Nannette is well-known on Flickr for her love of birds and using them in her work, so it was really a case of fate that she ended up being my partner on this one!

Ok, I'll stop blabbing on. Here it is, as we printed it on our family Christmas cards this year (we ramped up the colour saturation a bit for printing):

Here is the mini with it's 1/2" binding:

I made this felted wool 'picture' by fusing the background sections onto a piece of cotton canvas using Steam-a-Seam Lite. Each section of field and sky is butted up to the next, so no overlaps. I was able to tighten up the seams between two sections when I zigzagged across each one. Things got a little thick where the two layers of jaggedy-cut grass are overlapped, but I was able to free motion the grass blades with a lovely 30wt. variegated Aurofil thread without much difficulty.

I am particularly happy about the farmer's fence wire, which is 2 strands of DMC floss attached to the quilt only at the fence posts and where each 'wire' overlaps another one. I also really like how the Queen Anne's lace turned out with the white french knots. The mama sparrow checking out her real estate options is stitched freehand with 3 different colours of single-strands of DMC (light brown, grey and dark brown).

I can't tell you how great it made me feel when B asked if we could turn it into our Christmas card. He always silk-screens our cards, so it was a real pleasure for me to be able to share my original work with our family and friends this year (a few of them read this blog, but most don't really know what I do 'with all my spare time' hehe).

Okay, while I'm feeling all aglow, I would just like to send a shout out to Carolyn S. of Surrey, B.C. just in case she reads this blog. Carolyn wrote the sweetest letter to the editor about my Autumn Jewel Box pattern in Quilter's Connection fall magazine that made me blush, actually. Thank you so much for taking the time, Carolyn. When a friend emailed to ask if I'd seen the nice letter about me, at first I panicked thinking that maybe my mom wrote it! It was a relief to see a name I didn't recognize at the bottom of the letter!

Be sure to stop in tomorrow....it's Sew Mama Sew giveaway day!!