"Bon Chance" - A Finished Mini Quilt, and a Winner

This little mini quilt (about 16x20 inches) has a little story (also, it's hard to see the quilting, so scroll down for more pictures).

On Tuesday, I was in the midst of finishing the quilting on my swap quilt for the guild next week. My mind started to wander, as it tends to do while I'm quilting, and then I remembered... yes, I was going to my best friend's housewarming party on Friday, but I did not yet have a gift. Whoops. And Julie, who I made a Europe photo quilt  ("Windows into Europe") for, is obsessed with Paris. She had the most amazing time there. The image for this quilt popped into my head - and I couldn't get it out.

A house under the Eiffel Tower to commemorate her new house :) (also, "Paris", along its edge)

I'd been meaning to make something for this occasion for a while, but kept thinking, "oh, I'll do it when the party gets near." Well the party was near. Just a few days near.  So for two days after school - Wednesday and Thursday - I set pretty lofty goals and just got it done!

By the end of Wednesday I had the fabric cut, applied to interfacing where necessary, and raw-edge appliqued. Whew!

All day Thursday I looked forward to coming home and quilting. I finish, bound (in a pretty Erin McMorris blue), and labelled. Whew!



The quilting was a lot of fun. I thought echo quilting would bring out the Eiffel Tower the best (although the husband and brother are convinced it is, in fact, a giraffe.......?!? HOW does that look like a giraffe? HOW?). I'm still obsessed with practicing the woodgrain design, which I also did for my sewing machine cover. The trees here are in her favorite colors: black, purple, blue, and white (I HAD to use Pearl Bracelets not once, but twice!). I thought woodgrain fit perfectly because there should be more trees in that negative space!

I quilted the clouds pretty easily - this was inspired by my friend Jess's new quilt, "Somewhere Under," which will be in pattern form soon. I also quilted some special things into the quilt itself, to make it all about Julie:

Camera (near top) and paintbrush (near mid-bottom)

Medical cross (near top) for nursing

 The word "home" and two hearts, for the beautiful love she's recently found

 

Now, the name: I was brainstorming while crafting (clearly this really isn't a good thing to do) (or maybe it is because I remembered I needed to make the gift!), and one of the only French phrases I could think of off the top of my head was "bonne chance." I thought, in my naive, language-challenged brain, that it might mean "by chance" - a name that would stand for my by-chance realization about the party, AND the fact that she had a lot of those "by chance" moments on her trip. However, I then looked it up and saw that it meant "good luck," so I figured - that works too, considering what we are celebrating! THEN, I spelled it wrong, as you might have noticed in the blog post title and on my label. I laughed and just decided to keep it. The grammar freak in me is screaming, but I think she'll survive :)

Julie opened the gift last night and loved it! She's going to hang it up with all of her other Paris and European art, so hopefully I'll have a picture soon to share with you. I'm going to miss seeing this little quilt around all week, but it's meant for Julie, so I know it will be well-appreciated!

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Thanks to all those who entered the giveaway! I LOVED reading about all of your favorite teachers throughout the week. They helped on a couple of days when I came home from teaching feeling pretty tired myself. Right after I posted the giveaway, I realized it was also Teacher Appreciation Week, so the question worked perfectly!

The winner is Kathy from Just Quilt It! I've emailed her. Congrats!! Thanks to everyone for participating and welcome to all those who are new - I hope you'll stick around! :)

Linking up to:

Crazy Mom Quilts

TGIFF

Fabric Tuesday