The issue 5 call for entries to the Mini Quilt Gallery of Curated Quilts closes today and I've finished my (well, our) submission just in time.

I'll start with that "our" part. This color palette is not my typical palette. I purchased the Kona solids Shadow, Yarrow, Metal, Sunny, Moss, and Windsor just to participate in the challenge and they sat there, waiting for inspiration to strike. I had an idea, but unfortunately I'd seen that another maker made a nearly identical piece. On June 10th my son walked into my sewing room and I said, "I need a brilliant idea. I need a brilliant quilting idea." He responded, "arrange them lightest to darkest for me," and got to work.

His initial idea was to color block with six large rectangles. Then I filled him in on the theme of Connections/Improv. We discussed what improv meant and settled a plan. I would cut the fabric into quadrilaterals with scissors and he would arrange them on the design wall. I cut a few of each color, and as he filled the space he instructed me to cut particular colors to fill in the gaps he had.

I did all the piecing. I enjoyed the puzzle of putting together his design. It includes straight seams, smooth curves, and a set-in seam. We had to add a couple pieces in the top right to keep the project large enough for the challenge.

Then I went back to G to discuss quilting. I knew I wanted pretty dense quilting (but not matchstick) and I had four matching 50 wt Aurifil colors to use: Yellow #2135, Dove #2600, Medium Grey #1158, and Medium Delft Blue #2783. If I'd had all six colors I would have been inclined to quilt tone on tone in each section. I'm so glad I didn't. I asked G what area of the quilt he liked the most and wanted to emphasize. He liked the lower left, so I made that the focal point of my quilting. My quilting was done by walking foot and random color changes. I really like the effect.

I love that this challenge allowed me to connect with my son. It was the perfect size project for us to work on together. It finished at 10" x 10", with a faced binding. Thanks for the inspiration, Curated Quilts! Congratulations to all the other makers who have submitted their mini quilts. 121 so far!

You may have seen my i Mini that I created for the Minimalism challenge in issue 3 of CQ. (Fun fact, it's currently hanging in the San Mateo County Fair.)

G has made 5 of his own quilts. Check them out:

• Jungle of Animals
• Rainbow Swift
• House on the Hill
• Ocean Quilt
• My Sports Quilt (oops, the finish isn't on the blog yet)

I've linked up to Needle and Thread Thursday and TGIFF.

Curated Quilts is a new quarterly quilt journal, created by Amy Ellis and Christine Ricks, which features beautiful images of modern quilts and articles about artists, their work, and the quilting community. Each issue has a call for mini quilt submissions with a theme and color palette. The theme for issue three is minimal and the palette appealed to me. We were asked to use only a subset of: light grey, leaf green, grey, orchid pink, blue grey, black.

I started by pulling all the solids from my stash that fit these requirements. I didn't have any blue grey and ended up editing out the greys. My mini has Kona Cerise, Peapod, and Black. I brought in the grey with my quilting (Aurifil #2605). I also pieced the entire quilt with black (Aurifil #2692) thread since every seam had black fabric. My mini finished at approximately 13.5" square.

One of my goals for the year is to design with letters of the alphabet. I thought this challenge was the perfect opportunity to choose a letter and use it in my minimal design. I quickly landed on the letter i. Often I piece a quilt top and then I consider quilting option. For this project I considered my plan for quilting from the beginning, choosing to quilt the entire black background with 1/8" matchstick quilting so the vibrant letter i's stand out. This might be the first time I've been set on the quilting motif before taking a single stitch.

I began my quilting by stitching in the ditch on my vertical seams, then used a guide to quilt vertical lines every one inch.

I continued stitching between each line of quilting. This photo shows how I eyeballed the center of each section... those are 1/2 inch sections on the right, 1/4 inch in the middle, and 1/8 inch on the left.

My goal was 1/8 inch spacing. Here's the super closeup. :-)

The tricky part was starting and stopping around the pink and green pieces. Tons of threads to bury! In the end, all that work was totally worth it!

I chose a faced binding so the quilting and the pink pieces would go right to the edge. I use this technique for my faced binding, though I press the folded edge before attaching it to the quilt. ;-)

Thanks for visiting! It's been so fun to see what other have created for this challenge. Check them all out on the CQ call for entries. I've also linked up to Needle and Thread Thursday.

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