Monday, May 25, 2015

Spring Tiles

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend!  Other than some much needed time with my family I used the extra time to finish my May Aurifil Designer Mini Spring Tiles by Lynn Harris.  If you are looking for a fast easy (possibly beginner) project this little mini definitely delivers.

Lynn's version of Spring Tiles is very scrappy, very happy and very fun!  Pat Sloan also gave us a sneak peek of her version; still the same pattern just a switch up on layout of colors.  After downloading the pattern I headed straight to my stash to search for the right fabrics to make my version.  I wanted to go with a color layout similar to Pat's tonal blues that created three distinct squares.  I chose these poor little fat quarters.  They actually started out as another project but got abandoned some months ago. It was now their turn to shine.
After around 2 hrs (tops) of cutting and piecing this mini was ready to be quilted.  It was time to figure out a quilting plan.  I knew I wanted to highlight the three squares created by the blue/brown and cream fabrics.
This definitely highlighted my three squares but I didn't quite love the dot to dot quilting in the cream.  So I erased and tried again.  Maybe highlighting the three squares shouldn't be the plan.

This was a completely different approach. I thought about using squares to create nine four patch blocks.  No, I wanted my three squares.  So I decided to put away my markers and Plexiglas and start on my stitching in the ditch.  My hope was that something better would come to me.  

The more I stitched the more I thought about the nine four patch quilting version from above.  Then I remembered a pile of charm pack squares left over from the Chubby Churn Dash mini from February.  So I did the only rational thing...I stopped quilting and started piecing a second quilt.

This was probably the best idea I've ever had, because in the middle of piecing the second Spring Tiles this idea came from out of nowhere.
  Now I had what felt like the perfect answer to my original quilting problem.  All of the lines on the darker fabric had given this one a very masculine feel.  The addition of the curved quilting in the center square seemed to soften it a bit.  Problem solved and second mini pieced.

Now 100% of the focus was on the quilting and the Aurifil thread.  I few hours later I had my finished projects.  

One of my favorite parts of quilting is picking out the thread to use. The thread used on the quilt is just as important as the fabrics; they can really make or break a piece.  One of my favorite things about Aurifil thread is that it comes in so many different colors and shades.

I used #2309 silver white in the cream areas, #1285 Medium Bark in the blue/brown quilting areas, #2460 Dark Carmine Red in the red triangles and #2780 Dark Delft Blue for the binding.

For this one I used only two threads.  Aurifil #2405 Light Oyster for the quilting on all of the charm pack blocks and #1158 Medium Grey for the gray squares and binding.


This little project definitely proves that if one is fun, two is better!  And my darling Chubby Churn Dash now has a matching partner.  



2 comments:

Unknown said...

What a beautiful springtime minis. Surprising what the quilting does for a quilt. I love your quilting. Very inspiring.

Shelina (formerly known as Shasta) said...

I love making minis and all of these are just so cute! It is a good idea to step away and do something else while ideas percolate. That is why I work on so many projects at once.

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