Tag Archives: mini quilt

Project QUILTING 10.1: Hope Springs Eternal • 14 Comments

sarah • January 13, 2019

Last Sunday was the beginning of season 10 of Project QUILTING, a series of one-week quilt challenges. I've participated for the past two years and this year I'm a sponsor. The theme for this week's challenge is Hope Springs Eternal. Well... I was out of town for the first 4 days of the one week challenge, and then I had to spend Thursday and Friday making serious progress on a quilt deadline that I'll be posting on my blog tonight. This means I didn't even have time to think too much about this challenge until yesterday.

I had a hard time with this theme. In the end, with 14 hours until the deadline (including overnight... and I needed to sleep) I had hope I could crank out a small quilt. How's that for hope springing eternal? My initial goal was a mug rug, then I decided on placemat sized, and in the end I trimmed it to 18.5" x 18.5". I'll be linking up with less than 15 minutes to spare.

I used a lovely piece of hand dyed fabric from my friend Mel Beach and my Planned Improv: All About Angles technique. After demoing my technique on Wednesday (7 times!) I'm excited to work on some All About Angles projects.

I used two sizes of Aurifil Light Leaf Green (#1147) for this quilt. It was pieced and bound with Aurifil 50wt and quilted with Auriful 80wt. I hadn't used 80wt and really love the fine line it creates. It's certainly quilting that's all about the texture and not the color. I chose a fast motif from my recent class with Christa Watson. It's way fancier than a basic meander, but not much more difficult.

Here's the basic breakdown of how I made the quilt start to finish in under 14 hours.

Saturday
8pm - pull fabric
8:50pm - cut fabric
9:07pm - start sewing
10:50pm - bedtime

Sunday
5:45am - back at the machine
6:20am - finished quilt top
7am - quilting begins
7:45am - done quilting
8:40 - binding going on
9:25am - photos, then blog post
9:48am - linkup

Congratulations to everyone who finished the challenge! View them all at the Project QUILTING 10.1 linkup. Voting is open, so click over to check out the 124 submissions and vote for your 10 favorites.

I've linked up to Needle and Thread Thursday.

Curves Mini Quilt for Curated Quilts: Finished Quilt • 12 Comments

sarah • January 2, 2019

The Curves Mini Quilts challenge for Curated Quilts ends today. I love quilt challenges for a variety of reasons. The small size of a mini quilt is a great way to play with a new or different technique. When the Curves challenge was announced I loved the palette (though I totally missed that white was in the list) and knew that I would do something with gentle improv curves.

I was out of town for 9 days in December without my sewing machine, so I packed along my fabric, rotary cutter, and small cutting mat. This allowed me to work in my hotel room to prep all my pieces for the mini quilt.

When I returned home I needed to finish up one last December project before I could get to work on this project beginning January 1st. But since my pieces were all cut and organized, the units went together quickly.

I trimmed them down to 4-inch squares.

I opted to add in the white from the palette with my echo walking foot quilting. The 10.5" x 10.5" quilt was finished with a faced binding.

I'm linking up to the Curated Quilts Curves Mini Quilt Challenge call for entries and Michelle's Beauties Pageant, and Wendy's Peacock Party, and TGIFF with Anja. There are so many other beautiful submissions. Congratulations to everyone who participated.

Butterfly Mug Rugs • 16 Comments

sarah • October 31, 2018

The products featured in this post were given to me by Island Batik and Aurifil.

It's been a busy month of sewing... but not so much in the writing department. I have lots that I need to get onto the blog to share with you. Today I'm sharing the three mug rugs I finished this morning. As I finished up the binding before school it struck me that it would make more sense to be putting the finishing touches on costumes, but those were already all in order. Happy Halloween to all who are celebrating.

Our Island Batik theme this month was paper piecing. I opted for three little mug rugs featuring Cricket, Gidget, and Pepper, the Butterfly Charm Blocks by Lillyella.

I opted to use my Paisley Dot Brights 10" squares from my July box for the butterflies. Choosing the color combinations was the hardest part. So many to choose from! I ended up choosing another Island Batik print as inspiration for the palette on each mug rug. I used it for the backing/binding as well as the rectangle to the left of each butterfly block.

This first mug rug features Cricket. This beautiful red print was leftover from my Valentine's Day mug rugs. I couldn't help thinking of the Red Hat Ladies as I worked on this one because of the purple and red paisley dot print.

The orange mug rug features Gidget, and used a sunflower print leftover from my Bold and Brave All About Angles quilt. I had the most fun quilting this one, following the petal on the sunflower print.

The third butterfly is Pepper. She's my favorite. This feature print was also from Morning Sunshine (same as the sunflowers).

On each mug rug I started the quilting by stitching in the ditch around the edge of the butterfly using Aurifil 50wt #2600 Dove, then I quilted the background (solid of the butterfly in the same color. For the printed section to the left of each butterfly I picked a thread color that blended. From the top, I used Aurifil 50wt #2588 Light Magenta, #3920 Golden Glow (variegated), and #2510 Light Lilac. This same thread was used for the binding on each. For the first time I bound by wrapping the backing fabric around to the front. Here's a close up of what that looked like from the front.

I look forward to using these in the kitchen. I like using mug rugs for people to be able to keep track of which glass it theirs.

Thanks for visiting! I hope you enjoy seeing my mug rugs. These little butterfly blocks go together really quickly. I used them long ago on a mini quilt. I love seeing the variety of ways people have used them.