It is now about 5 years since I made my first quilt and in those years I have never made a mini quilt. Well, that has changed now. A call went out for a competition for mini quilt for a forum I belong to and I thought I would give it a go.
A few choice words were said when I realised my design was more suitable to working in centimetres than inches if it were to meet the size requirements, but freezer paper and an “add a quarter” ruler came to the rescue enabling me to cut metric-sized shapes with a quarter inch seam. Once I had decided on the placement of the fabrics, piecing the quilt was quick, though there was one tricky square that required two partial seams – another planning failure on my part.
I used Liberty lawn for the backing and a piece of microfleece for the wadding as traditional wadding was too thick/stiff for such a small project. When it came to the quilting, I was tempted to reach for the walking foot, but took the advantage of the manageable size of the quilt to try some FMQ. I used Aurifil 50 wt in a dark grey as it blended with most of the fabrics, but contrasted with a few of the darker pieces. Quilting was kept fairly sparse so as not to add any extra stiffness and the design is probably best described as a “meandering square” and was chosen to reflect the shapes of the piecing. A narrow double fold binding, again in Liberty lawn, was applied and hand stitched to the back, making the finished quilt ~8.5 x 10.5”.
I don’t for one minute think it will win the competition (not enough batiks!), but it has used up some Liberty scraps and was a chance to try a bit of free motion quilting.
