Week of Minis, Saturday and Sunday

 

Another place mat in gorgeous yellow, ready to quilt. The pink and green ones are finished, as is the French Hen, for which I now have all the pictures for a pattern

Table runner quilted...

And trimmed

Other things on the way, but not yet photographed..

Hanging up our Smalls

 Another productive day in MiniQuiltVille: it's been a day for smalls - here's what we've been doing.

HH has been improv-ing on charm squares and mini charms, and I have been paper piecing as is my wont! Patterns for each of these mini quilt projects will be hitting the web soon. If you haven't already done so, sign up to our joint newsletter: Modern Art Quilters, to find out when. CLICK HERE to view past issues (lots of inspiration, ideas and patterns) and sign-up.

Still heading home in daylight since there's a lot of snow and ice on the roads which gave me the chance to make more of these miniature blocks while the other half was on Zoom with his Scouts.

These will finish to 1.5 inches each and I can only make a few at a time before I start to go cross-eyed and have to do something else for a bit so this one is growing slowly but I am loving it. Only another four to go.

Further Adventures

 Well, after a slightly hair-raising trip to the Post Office, we got together at lunchtime again for further minis-and-miniatures

I've been sorting blocks for a pattern - these will be table mats to go with a table runner, in assorted colours - my little Tigers, trimmed and ready to sew together...

And this is an almost - finished sample for a new pattern - this is "French Hen"

I took photos for the pattern at every stage so it took most of the afternoon, but I'm really happy with this

Shown here with the table-mat flimsies, later layered and I have quilted some, ready to bind tomorrow. The Table runner set will be a new pattern and a video quite soon...

All day working on  one of my nice 99s, they are so quiet and easy to use and don't get in the way of conversation. And this one will be really ready to go to a new home when I'm done with it this week

HB is working on true minature blocks - see how tiny the strips are, and one star...

More tomorrow

Assembling a small forest...

Yesterday and Monday's Week Of Miniatures project. Finished quilt is 11-1/2 by 7-1/2 inches and is suitable for Miniature Quilt categories in competitions... Quilted in very fine matchstick lines with an Aurifil variegated 60 weight thread...

Detail of the quilting.

This little tree piece is all made from an old pack of Oakshott Fabrics Autumn (the original 21 colours, but the new selection is pretty nice too) and I started with a pack of 5-inch charm squares which have been lurking for a while

I cut the pieces like this, used the biggest piece as the background for each tree and the strips for the branches, the wider strip as the trunk. Tutorial HERE but I do NOT recommend you start this small...

 

 

 I arranged the trees on my little design board, then took a photo in black-and-white to assess the shading. Note the second tree from the left in the second row up - it's much lighter than the others, so I moved it up.  Your phone camera will do this for you, it's really useful

Trimming each pair to make straight edges, I sewed them together...

I arranged the pieces into slightly random blocks, as this makes for a better result...

 Only trim when you are ready to sew together. Two straight lines sewn together will always lie flat, of course. Press every time!

And sew on...All assembled. Quilt before trimming...

 

Snow bound quilts

 I am so glad I brought home some fabric on Sunday when I saw the snow forecast. Hopefully this little lots should give enough to play with!

I started the week making a couple of small quilts rather than true miniatures - I have a great stash of lovely, fine Liberty Tana Lawn and OAKSHOTT which are great for miniatures. I hope to be back in the studio soon so I can play with them.

In the meantime here are the results of the past two days:

Each of these blocks finished to 2.5 inches and the sashing is half an inch (the edges are all square, it's just my photography that's not!) I have hopes of turning this into a little sampler wall hanging with lots of different techniques included.

This is Pinnacle - a design I did some time ago for OAKSHOTT as a wall quilt - time to make it again for my own amusement. Actually, there's always an ulterior motive: I am planning to use these fun blocks in various other small projects. The big ones above were made with charm squares and the smaller ones started with candy squares (2.5 inch)

More later in the week

Week of Minis and Miniatures

HB and I made a grand plan to spend the week making mini quilts (also called Smalls) and Miniatures (which should look like a big quilt in a photo without a measure for scale)

And then, it has snowed, boy has it snowed. So we are working in our respective little spaces and Zooming for company...

In between sewing teeny blocks I packed some more Oakshott scrap packs, these have been going like the proverbial warm buns
Click Here for a link to buy...

So, I found a charm pack (5 inch squares) of the old hand-woven Oakshott fabrics Autumn colours (21 colours in the original selection) and cut them like this

Then I made 21 little trees, exchanging the colours. Charm pack at the bottom for scale. Tomorrow I will trim these and sew them together in some way...

This is my little design wall at the top of the stairs,  which was all scrappy and full of little bits of paper, so I cleaned it all off and hung up a selection of my earlier pieces for inspiration. And I have made a list of possible ideas which is probably far too long

More tomorrow