moda mini charm series: part one

Do you guys ever enter giveaways on Instagram? I usually only do ones that require me to like a picture or leave my email address. Occasionally I will enter one if I have to tag someone, but rarely. 

Well, recently, I entered a giveaway on the Martingale blog and I won! Moda had given them 15 bags of their mini charm packs to give away along with their book "Moda All-Stars: Mini Marvels". I thought the little fabric packs were adorable and I also thought doing a mini quilt would be a good entry into quilting, so I entered! 

I was notified that I won and received both items the week after Christmas. I have to be honest that when I opened them up, I was really excited! Since taking up sewing, any fabric makes me happy! 

I flipped through all the little packs and the book. I'm looking forward to making one of the mini-quilts, but I don't have all the materials on hand, so that project is on hold. So, I started brainstorming what else I could use the mini-charm packs for. 

In each pack there are 42 squares each cut at 2.5x2.5". They are obviously perfect little pre-cuts for a quilt, but I have come up with a few more ideas on how to use them. (I've set aside the ones I'm going to eventually use for a quilt).

I decided to put together a little series of posts with a few different ideas about what to use Moda's mini charm packs for when you're not making a quilt. 

For the first post, I wanted to make something for my daughter that wasn't clothing. I sorted through all the packs and chose the one that looked most like her. 

I decided to go with "Brighten Up!" by Me & My Sister Designs. The bright colors and the varied shapes were perfect! 

I ended up choosing a simple plush bock project because I needed a lot of squares and I wasn't going to have to make any cuts. 

I needed 6 squares for each block, so since there were 42 squares in the pack, I knew I could make 7 blocks. I sorted them out and tried to color coordinate them while also making sure that I didn't double up on patterns for any one block.

I came up with 6 good blocks and the 7th had multiple patterns and mismatched colors, so that became my test block.

After sewing the test block and noting any adjustments (I reduced the seam allowance from 1/2 inch to 1/4 inch), I proceeded in an assembly line fashion sewing all the blocks, then stuffing them with polyfil, and then hand-stitching them closed. 

I love them! I think they are adorable and I want to make a bunch more as baby gifts. I ended up putting them in my daughter's stocking for Christmas and she loves throwing them into baskets. Next time I really want to add some bells or rattles inside. 

If you want to see what else I make with my mini-charm packs, make sure you are subscribed to the blog and follow me on Instagram! 

Do you have a favorite way to use pre-cut fabrics? Share with me in the comments below! 

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This post was linked at:

http://www.gingersnapcrafts.com/2017/01/wow-me-wednesday-281.html