Finish: Mod Q Improv B Holiday Swap

This year I joined an online quilting bee that is focused on making improv blocks (blocks that don't follow a strict pattern). You can see a few of the bee blocks that I've made here, and the group's Flickr page here.

We decided that our project for December would be a mini-quilt swap. We were blindly assigned partners from the group and set out to make them mini-quilts and few fun "add-ins." I found my partner's Pinterest page and was able to see recent quilt pics that she had pinned: some of which were "Polaroid Block" quilts. Just a few weeks earlier another group member, Mandy Leins, made a polaroid quilt for Quilt Market. Between the pictures of Mandy's quilt and the Polaroid quilts I was seeing on Pinterest & Flickr...I knew I wanted to make one for my partner. Plus I had a TON of holiday fabric scraps from making fabric gift bags through the years that were going to work perfectly for fussy cutting.

To make the Polaroid blocks I followed this tutorial, and then added more negative (red) space around each block. Once I had the blocks done, I put them on a random angle and trimmed them all to 6 1/2" square (including seam allowance).  I didn't really have a plan for the size of the quilt when I started out; I just picked fabric scraps, "fussy cut" images for the Polaroids, and then started making the blocks. Once I had all my blocks made, I laid them out several different ways and settled on a "big-mini" (wall-hanging?) quilt size. In the end I used 35 of my Polaroid blocks.

The quilt is roughly 42" tall and 30" wide. I used Kona Cotton's "Rich Red" for the background and bound it in a green & white stripe from Me & My Sister Design's "Ready, Set, Snow" collection for Moda.

I backed the quilt in this fun multi-color "Yonder Star" fabric from Alexander Henry, quilted "in-the-ditch" on the inside and outside of each Polaroid, and then added hanging pockets. Now it's time to send it off. My fingers are crossed that my partner likes it!