Simple Sewendipity: This Quilt is So Baller...

The major breakthrough of my summer sewing slump was all because of my friend Sarah. You know Sarah from Smiles Too Loudly, don't you? If you don't already, go ahead and check her out because she's awesome.

Anyway, a few months ago Sarah and I both signed up for the Schnitzel and Boo Mini Quilt Swap on Instagram. We were pretty excited about it but also a little nervous at how large it was and (let's be honest) if we would actually like what we got. So we made a little side pact - just in case something went off the rails along the way, we'd be each other's "angel" and come up with something pretty cool to take the sting of disappointment away.

In the meantime, I made a mini Wavelength quilt that I was pretty darn proud of. Sarah really liked it too - enough to show her husband Joe who proclaimed that "this quilt is so baller!" Never had one of my quilts called anything like "baller" before and it gave me a good laugh. I ended up really liking the mini that I received in return from Amira at Little Mushroom Cap. When I checked back in with Sarah, she had made this gorgeous Aerial mini. But was still waiting...

and waiting...and waiting. She did eventually get her mini and was pretty happy with it! But in the weeks of in between time when she was certain that she had somehow been forgotten and left off the list, I decided to take matters in my own hands. Angel-style.

So Sarah likes yellow. A lot. Yellow is not my favorite to work with, but I needed to make Sarah a yellow mini quilt because I knew it would be perfect for her. She's also a novelty print fan - especially cats. On a trip up to my grandmother's during the summer, I found the perfect fabrics to start with.

And so after not sewing for weeks and weeks, I jumped right back into another Wavelength mini. I went for lemon/lime tones with some aqua and magenta thrown in to complete the spectrum.

Plus I had to include a few fussy cuts. Obviously.

Instead of my previous choice of low volumes creams for the background, this time I went with varying shades of grey. I wanted the star points getting lighter towards the edges while the grey would be getting darker. This sort of ended up getting value-muddy in the middle, but I still like the effect.

I used the kitty fabric again in the binding and the effect of cats peeking out from the edge was just too perfect...

Of course, the best part of all of this was throwing out little teases of what I was working on via Instagram. All the while, Sarah had NO idea that this was going to be for her...

My absolute favorite part was when I posted my fabric pull for the quilt and this was Sarah's comment:

I chortled with glee like your baddest Disney villain.

No wait...I lied. My favorite part is the back. Because I needed to acknowledge that with all the love she put into the quilty universe without knowing what she would get back in return, Sarah deserved a baller quilt too.