March STUD reveal

My partner received the March Japanese-themed mini-quilt I made for the STUD swap, so here's my reveal of the final project. At first I was at a loss as to what to make for the Japanese theme. I had these Japanese fabrics, but didn't know what to do as far as piecing was concerned... Until someone posted some pictures of fabric origami and these folded flowers. Perfect. 

So I made some flowers pretty much using this tutorial, though I stitched all of my petals in the center and, before piecing, stitched them on the outside, too, to make sure I'd have the straightest edge possible for piecing them in. The piecing itself was a little tricky, but I think it turned out okay. I only stitched the very tips of the petals to the quilt top. 

For the quilting, I did a sashiko-like hand-quilting stitch all over, using brown thread on the tree parts and white thread in the background. A while ago I was lucky enough to win a copy of Zakka Sewing from Softies Central (thanks so much, Therese!) and it arrived just in time to inspire this quilting motif. There's a pattern for sashiko placemats that I really liked, so I tried to imitate that stitching pattern for this quilt. 

The good news is this is done and received and the swap for March is completed. The bad news is I have not done ANY work on the twin I'm making for myself. The piecing isn't awful, but the quilting takes forever. I'm only a couple of feet into the binding on my BNP and these projects are both weighing a little heavily on me now. I'm hoping to finish the binding on the BNP and at least get the twin top pieced this weekend. We'll see what actually happens.