September Mini Quilt

I am excited to be posting 2 finishes this week!

This is my September mini quilt that was made from a free pattern by Snowy Days Quilting. The pattern is called "Stars at sea" and was part of "QAL by the sea".  

The hardest part was cutting out and organizing the 86 pieces for the 12" block.

The easiest part was picking the thread colours for quilting. Blue thread in the background sky and yellow or gold thread for the stars.

I machine quilted the star blocks with straight lines using the free motion foot.  It's always a challenge for me to quilt a project evenly and not "over quilt" some areas. I quilted a few random radiating lines in the background to help the quilt lay flatter, and was careful to stop when it was "enough".

I was so pleased with that starry blue batik that I found in the stash for the background of this starry night mini quilt, but it was difficult to accurately photograph and looks a little different in each photo. 

Finished size"12.5" x 12.5"

Hop over to The Constant Quilter to see more mini quilts made this month.

Mini Quilt Finish

My July mini project was inspired by a baggie of donated 1" HST blocks. 
I wasn't sure what they would become when I started playing with the blocks, but this is what the design board/wool pressing mat looked like during construction. 

Mug Mats

Eventually I figured out that I was making 2 mug mats for my sister. 

I used a total of 46 HST blocks and a wonderful text print I found in my neutral bin.

To give you a better perspective of the mats I took a picture of them with my afternoon snack.
Finished sizes are:
8" x 4.75" and
8.5" x 4"

We are halfway through this memorable year and I thought I would put all the finished minis on the design wall for a photo before the mug mats began their journey to my sister's house. It's interesting that I have made this assortment of quilts in the past 6 months and have not yet used purple, green or orange. I do seem to be quite narrow in my colour usage. Perhaps I can branch out a bit more the rest of the year?

2020 Miniature Quilt Collection

To see more mini quilts made in July, hop over to The Constant Quilter blog.
Linking up to Finished(or not) Friday

This Little Pandemic Piggy

Happy Canada Day!
It will be a different kind of celebration this year for Canada Day. There will be no parades, no public firework displays, no midway in the park, no outdoor concerts, and no gatherings of more than 10 people. It is such a strange time due to COVID.

In addition to quietly celebrating Canada Day, I am also celebrating that "This Little Pandemic Piggy" quilt is finished! 

"This Little Pandemic Piggy"

I did a bit of machine quilting and then added some hand quilting in pink stitches for added texture and interest (and fun!) 

auditioning binding fabrics

I had so many creative suggestions for names for this project - you can see some of them in the comment section on this post. Julierose suggested "This little piggy" and I added the "pandemic" adjective. I also had help from blog readers to decide the layout since I wasn't sure about how to position the letters/words around the centre block. 

The centre pig block is from Kelli's blog "Seriously... I think it needs stitches" and the letters are inspired by Tonya Ricucci's style of letter making from Word Play Quilts.
Finished size: 16" x 17"

I really wanted to have the words read "Take ONLY what you need", but there was not enough space on a mini quilt for that many words. But still... the sentiment is there. Take what you need and leave the rest to share with your neighbours/community! This mini quilt will be my reminder of what the COVID19 experience was like in March and April. The panic buying and hoarding that went on was shocking to me. I think some people won't have to purchase toilet paper for about 20 years! Having witnessed the selfishness every day, I shudder to think what would happen if there ever was an actual food supply chain issue!

Here are my 2020 minis quilts (minus the red and white April mini that seems to be MIA!)

2020 Miniature Quilts

I'm so pleased to have my June mini quilt finished! Hop over to Wendy's blog The Constant Quilter to see more mini quilt finishes this month.  And also...I'm so tickled to have my mini nesting doll block included in Wendy's "Community Supper" potholder style quilt!

May Mini Quilt

sorting scraps

This month's mini quilt was started during a zoom meeting. I had a pile of scraps that were slightly out of view of the camera, and I enjoyed myself so much more by multitasking with fabric!

sewing the last goose

When the meeting ended I began sewing a few flying geese blocks and just kept going until I had enough for a little quilt. You can see the piles of scraps still needing to become part of something. My January mini quilt was made from the same collection of scraps.

stitching the hanging sleeve

Sometimes I wonder why I make these little things. They serve absolutely no purpose, except to make me happy in a way that is not logical or explainable. You can see that the hanging sleeve is about the size of my needle.

And here it is... may I present to you "Of course I still love you". 

"Of course I still love you"

The title is the name of the SpaceX drone ship which was repeated so often during the televised launch yesterday. I was stitching the binding while watching the replay of this historic event.

Finished size: 5" x 5.75"

Hop over to Wendy's blog The Constant Quilter to see more miniature quilts made in the month of May. 
Linking up to Cheryl's Favorite Finish, Alycia's Finished (or not) Friday, and Cynthia's Oh Scrap party.

April Miniature

I finished my April mini quilt with one day to spare!

working on the layout on my messy sewing table

The seeds of this quilt were donated "cut off corner" triangles from a red and white quilt that my friend Jackie made. Instead of throwing them in the garbage, she gifted them to me. They were a range of sizes and it took a long time to get all the triangles turned into HSTs, then squared up to similar sizes, and sewn together in pinwheel blocks. 
No triangle was left behind! 
Then the blocks waited for another couple of years, aging to perfection.

Then I sewed similar sized pinwheels together and ended up with 15 blocks of different sizes. White sashing and borders were added and the quilting was done by walking foot... simple straight lines.

The HSTs in the centre block are .5" and there are 36 of them in that 3" block! So tiny and adorable! There are a total of 116 HSTs in this quilt (anyone want to check the math for me?!?! LOL)  and the finished size is 15.5" x 15.5".

I couldn't resist taking a photo of the quilt in the backyard to show that the rhubarb patch is up and the grass is turning green! Spring is finally here!
Hop over to The Constant Quilter later this week where Wendy will post the links for the April miniature finishes.

March Miniature

Wow what a week this is!

I hope you are all taking good care of yourself and enjoying as much medicinal quilting as you have time and energy for. My daughter sent me this to think about. It sure does seem like there is not much I can control, but I am working hard on everything in the centre circle. 

And so... I have another finish to share!

When attending my annual quilt retreat in February I was working on my 150 Canadian Women project, and for a couple of days I was only working with red and white fabrics.

mini block and mini iron

In the red scrap bin I found some parts to make heart blocks. I think they were leftover teaching samples from way back in the day when I used to teach mini quilt making. Isn't this block cute beside my tiny iron?

attaching binding with walking foot

There were enough pieces to make 6 hearts and I sewed them together with a narrow sashing. The quilting was very simple straight lines. I made a single layer binding using a 1.5" strip from the scrap bin. I often use this method on mini quilts (instead of the usual bifold binding) because it just lays flatter with less bulk.

hand stitching the binding

Here's a photo of hand stitching the binding. Isn't that a fun fabric for the backing!?
These Clover black gold needles are my favourite for binding. The only challenge is that the eye of the needle is so tiny that sometimes I have to really look hard to see which end has the hole to put the thread through. Where is my needle threader?!?

And here is the finished March Mini!

"Full of love"

The finished size is 10.25" x 14.5".



And because I have more time for photo ops ... 
here is the outdoor photo.
It's interesting how some of the background fabric looks yellow here when taken on the snowy white background.

And here is the indoor photo showing the three miniature quilts I've made so far this year.
I'm looking forward to seeing the other mini quilts made this month when Wendy posts the list over at The Constant Quilter blog .

Sending you lots of love and wishing you safety and good health! 💖

February Mini Quilt

When I started working on this mini quilt, I wasn't sure what it was going to become. These were some of the squares I started sewing 1" connecting corners onto. The number of pieces determined the size of the quilt.

I went with a layout of 2 X's and 2 O's.
One of the things I enjoy about miniature quilts is how quickly they can be made. The machine quilting time was less than 15 minutes. And it is so fun... no pulling and pushing and shoving the quilt through the machine as we do with large quilts. 


Another think I enjoy is using up small bits of fabric that other quilters might toss in the trash. My February mini quilt is a perfect example of this. The X and O blocks measure 2".

I took a little walk to take a perspective photo of this quilt, but I do not think I accomplished my goal since it looks quite large in this photo.
Oh well, you get the idea and can clearly see that this mini quilt brings colour and love to a very cold winter day.

Maybe this is a better perspective shot of finishing the quilt with a tiny label.

Wendy at The Constant Quilter will soon be posting the links to other mini quilts being finished this month.

January Miniature Quilt

Wendy at The Constant Quilter encourages fellow bloggers to make miniature quilts to link to at the end of the month. 

starting blocks

I enjoy making mini quilts and am looking forward to sewing up lots of tiny scraps in 2020.
My January project comes from a scrap bag from a friend that was full of 1.25" squares. 
I posted last week about this muddy mess of a mini scrap quilt, and for some unknown reason that blog post has disappeared into the ether. Blogging (and life in general) is weird that way... now you see it, and now it's gone!

miniature quilt top with dark blue sashing

Anyway, in the comments on that missing post Annie suggested a dark blue sashing to give "drama and definition". Such an excellent idea... thanks Annie!
Here is the same blocks with sashing... so much better!

back of the quilt top

This is a photo of the quilt top from the back so you can see how I pressed all the little seams. It is very precise sewing and sometimes challenging with pieces that finish 3/4", but I enjoy it!

This photo shows the scale of the blocks as I was quilting the diagonal lines with the walking foot. The finished block size is 2.25" and there are 271 pieces in the quilt.

Here is my January miniature quilt measuring 16" square. 

Because most (all?) of the scrap pieces (except the sashing) are William Morris fabrics, I am calling this "William Chains".
 I like the strong diagonal neutral chains in this design. 


To see the links to the other January miniature quilts, hop over to The Constant Quilter.