Friday, April 24, 2015

Mini Quilt Addiction

Recently I posted this picture to Pat Sloan's wonderful quilting group on FaceBook (Quilt Along with Pat Sloan--  I love being apart of this amazing group of quilters.  Everyone is so supportive and we have fun giving each other advice.)

I was in need of advice on which fabric to choose for my binding.  I had so many people respond with great advice, later asking which I chose and questions about the pattern that I thought I would write this entry.

I realize I have an addiction to making miniature quilts but I have my reasons.
     1) the are just adorable
     2) I can purchase smaller amounts of fabric (I have limited space at home)
     3) quicker to assemble than larger quilts (although not always)
     4) easier to quilt on my domestic machine
     5) faster sense of completion from start to finish

I stumbled upon 101 Fabulous Small Quilts a few years ago on amazon.  This has been one of the best quilting purchases have I have made!

It is full of beautiful miniature quilts to keep you busy for hours.  (Also don't forget Pat's Aurifil Mystery Designer BOM for 2015.  Each one is a mini quilt FlurryChubby Churn Dash, April's Mini)  This particular quilt is called Sunny Lane.  I made it last year and loved it so much I had to make another.  

I chose a fat quarter bundle from my stash that had been begging for a while now to be used and got started.  The quilt itself is made up of four of these blocks...

After piecing them together I had to figure out what do for the boarder.  

I almost went with the yellow fabric on the right, but my voice of reason told me to use the dark blue.  By voice of reason I mean my husband and he was right I LOVED the blue after it was pieced together.  

I'm constantly building up my Aurifil thread inventory, so I hopped online and ordered a nice dark blue and yellow spool so that I could start quilting as soon as it was pieced.

Next comes my favorite part...quilting it.  Out came the Plexiglas and dry erase markers.

This is all I had to draw to convince myself that this was the plan and for once the plan did not change when I sat down to quilt it.  I used two pieces of a warm natural batting for this project, which I had never done before.  The extra layer of batting really did help some of the quilting to "pop."


After all the quilting was completed, came my plea for help on picking out a binding.  I truly appreciated all the comments of everyone weighing in.  Some asked why I didn't use the blue (and I probably would have) but I didn't have any left to use.  This lead me to consider the other color options.  By an overall land slide the light yellow seemed to win.  I was leaning toward the gold in the beginning but asked for everyone's opinion because I was having doubts about it.  


I do think the yellow gives is a nice fresh burst of color, I'm very happy with it!

I also wanted to post pictures of the one I did a few years ago.  It was one of my first attempts at custom quilting a piece.




I couldn't resist getting a picture of them both together








6 comments:

Unknown said...

very nice! you're so talented!

Cheryl's Teapots2Quilting said...

The binding you chose was great. I'd never heard of using plexiglass as a design board for quilting.

Mary said...

Nice projects. I like to make small quilts for the same reasons.

Cynthia's Creating Ark said...

They are so cute. I must have a go at doing some mini. They would make lovely Christmas presents. The 2 layers of batting is such a good idea. I have lots of batting offcuts. I think a plan is coming together.

Dana Gaffney said...

They are so pretty and your quilting is perfect. I need to get some plexiglass, what a great way to try out designs.

Twelve One Five said...

I actually heard a lot about this book by another one of my book blogger friends, so I'm starting to think that I might need to read it. It looks good, even though some of the subjects will definitely be a little difficult to deal with.

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