Haven Secret Swap

Our DGS Haven circle had the month of November off, but decided to use the month to have a secret swap. Kelli-our fearless leader- assigned us partners while we made up inspiration collages to help our partner know what types of things we liked, fabrics, colors, etc. Here is my collage if you want to take a peek.

My secret partner was Stephanie (aka Spontaneous Threads) here was her 'collage'. It's just one picture of some wild improve piecing in warm colors with a bit of bright blue.  Ohhh. Kaaay.  One little inspiration picture was not what I was expecting! She mentioned she mostly wanted 4 placemats and they could all be different.  So I had basically all the creative freedom I wanted! Nice!

Here was my little sneak-peak pic I got to share. 

And here are the 4 placemats I ended up making! I initially had all the churn-dash blocks in one placemat and all the curved blocks in another. But they were both just way too big. So I figured out if I ripped some parts off each of them and put them both together, they would make another placemat about the same size. 

And the last placemat I followed my lone inspiration photo and did some scrappy improve piecing. I had fun with the quilting too. I had noticed that Stephanie mentioned in a comment somewhere about loving matchstick quilting so I had to do one with that. I used a solid mustard yellow for the binding on them all to tie them together.

I also made a zipper pouch with some selvages and a little pincushion.  I used Amanda Jean's tutorial for the pincushion. Stephanie just loved everything! Phew!

Melissa (aka Cycling Janes) had my name and made me this adorable Christmas table topper and this fabric basket organizer which was filled up with some great charm squares. I have already used a bunch of them to make some pillows for my living room.  Thanks so much Melissa--I love them all!