Swapping

I participated in the Swap til You Drop mini quilt swap Flickr group in February. The theme was "Love is in the Air". My partner was Lollydo . She made me this absolutely adorable snail mini.

  
She checked out the items that I marked as favorites and based the mini on those, as well as my information that come February I really like red and pink combos to brighten a dreary month.
I think it's just the cutest thing. I totally love everything about it. It has the embroidered snail w/the chenille shell, the red, pink, turquoise combo. And the plaid circles! Have I mentioned how much I love plaid!

The back is really cute also. Look at how wonderful the MoMo 'Wonderland' patchwork looks with the embroidery on it. I hung it on the flipper of my overhead cabinet at work. It makes me smile when I look up from my computer screen.

This is the mini I made for Lollydo. She has 3 dogs that she just adores and told me that she likes orange. I used a photo that she had on her blog of her dogs looking up at the camera after emptying the toy basket.

I used a sharpie marker and outlined the dogs on the back of the paper. I then traced it onto fusible web and used solid black for the dog's silouettes. I quilted in their features w/grey thread.

I used the amzing floral for the top because I thought it looked fabulous with the orange. The bones are the "Love is in the Air" part. I wanted to have the side of a person holding a bone silouette on the side, but couldn't work it out to my satisfaction. 

I used the orange plaid on the back. I think it looks pretty great on the back as well. Don't look too closely at the quilting though.

I thought I was having tension issues, but it ends up that I hadn't pushed the 'feed dogs down' button all the way over, so I was really fighting the feed dogs the whole time I was free motion quilting.

I'm rather pleased with it, and I think Lollydo is as well.