Swappin For Ale

This little project was released from Quilters Protection Services last week. It's been in the works for a couple months and was my mini quilt for the Maritime Modern Quilt Guild's summer swap. This whole swap thing was pretty fun. You had to fill out a questionnaire about your abilities, likes and dislikes and then the fabulous Amanda (the guilds swap momma) matched each of us up with an appropriate partner. I got teamed up with my pal Linda over at Scrapmaster! (No pressure there....sheesh!)

Now, our wee Linda hails from a little coastal community called Prospect not too far from me. I've been there plenty of times and I knew I just had to make her a treasure from her home town; her fathers fish store seemed like the perfect choice. I practically disregarded everything she wrote on her questionnaire and blazed a trail to my own idea of what she might like...have I ever mentioned I like to do things my way? Poor gal never stood a chance of getting something with Alison Glass fabrics in turquoise  and aqua once my brain caught fire!!  I had so much fun with this free pieced fish store and have been sitting on hot bricks for a whole month just waiting for the time to come to give it to her because I finished it up early.

I pulled fabrics that whimsically spoke to me according to a photo I found of it on her blog post, For Ale and set to work. I wasn't setting out to build an identical representation of the stage, I wanted it to be fun! A quick sketch, some slicing and stitching, more slicing, more stitching, some head scratching, a little ripping, some cutting off and some adding more on led me here....

And last week, even though I was on the way to the airport, I had to make a quick stop in to Patch where the meeting was being held to do our swap. I couldn't stay long enough to see all the gals swapping and we had to do ours before the meeting even started but I wouldn't have missed this for anything.

SHE LOVED IT!


I couldn't wait to see what she had come up with for me. I might as well admit here and now that my old buddy Jack Daniel had a hand in the filling out of my questionnaire. Poor Linda. I don't think she had much to go on but man-oh-man, somehow she nailed it! I just love my mini! She even put in some free pieced fishes on the back and you all know how much fun I had with those this winter! Linda is the free motion quilting queen in our little guild and she pebbled out her little heart. There are so many bits and pieces of me in there...wonky houses, lots of purple, free pieced letters and even some fabrics we traded at a workshop once! It's a treasure for sure...

It's perfect. And it's me.