My Instagram feed is abuzz with pics of cute and colourful mini quilts right now. They are all the rage among quilters, and now that I've made a few I can see why.
Fast to make, mini quilts give us a chance to try out lots of new designs and techniques without taking too much time, and they're small enough to decorate a wall.
You might recall my post on August's St Mark's Quilters workshop, where Di B showed us how to make a mini braid quilt using foundation paper piecing.
I thought this would be the perfect scrap-eater project, and after a rummage in my scrap bin I cut strips and grouped them into four colours, graded from light to darker hues within those colours.
As usual, I had to over-think this one, and instead of picking random colours I found myself making an ombré-shaded braid in pink to start.
I liked it! So I added a second braid in yellow.
And another in blue, but with the stronger shades grouped in the centre of the braid.
Then I did the same when I played with my greens.
Although my original plan had been to make just four braids, it was obvious that now I needed a fifth to balance out the design, so I pressed my purples into service.
By now the quilt was looking a little wider than I wanted, so I added tiny floating half inch wide bars at the top and bottom of my braids, to give it some height.
Mini quilts are also excellent for practising machine quilting. Not as daunting as a large quilt. I started by quilting wavy half feathers between the braids.
Then I echoed the chevron shapes of the braids each side of those little colour bars.
Finally I took my courage in both hands and quilted my very favourite feathers along each side border. Just 6 months ago I could never have done this, but with the help of an Angela Walters class on Craftsy, and lots of practice, I'm starting to feel more comfortable with feathers.
I took this photo in low light deliberately so the quilting shows up.
If you look closely in the pic above you'll see that there are long threads sitting on the surface. These needed to be buried deep in the batting layer, and the easiest way to do this is to use a self-threading needle (I use MatildasOwn).
Beats trying to push that short thread through the eye of a needle dozens of times, and as long as you pull the needle through carefully, perhaps at a little angle, the thread won't pop out of the eye. I take the needle through the batting for a short distance (an inch or so) and then out again, and snip off close to the surface of the quilt, being very careful not to snip the quilt!
My little quilt turned out much fancier than I had envisaged, and took much more work than I had intended, but I love it.
It used a wide variety of scraps, but at half an inch wide it was rather a frugal eater, and made little impact on my scrap stash.
I used foundation papers designed by the late Julie Wallace of The Quilter's Barn in Victoria to piece together my braids, but her shop is closed now.
However, if you want to make your own version, you can download something similar (free) from Nikki M's Buzy Day blog here.
There's nothing quite so delicious as spending a cold rainy day inside, toasty and warm, sewing quilts with good friends - and yesterday morning was a gourmet day for St Mark's Quilters.
We missed our other regulars, Liz (on a super-exciting holiday), Moo, Gail, Sophie, Susan, Helen and Cath, but those who braved the rain showers brought along finished Blankets of Love sweet enough to warm a grieving parent's heart.
Margaret has been making the most of a Peter Rabbit panel, combining fussy cuts with coordinating plain fabrics to make them go further. Those tiny tossed rainbow hearts around the border work a treat too.
Margaret's our queen of quilt-as-you-go. Tiny strips from bigger projects are never wasted in her hands, and this month she stitched them into another rhapsody in blue..
I can usually pick a quilt Gillian's made by the fancy serpentine stitched quilting she likes to use, as well as her favourite gelato pastels. Love this!
This next one, also by Gillian, gave me an 'ear worm' for the rest of the day. Remember Ernie singing 'Rubber Duckie' in the bath on Sesame Street? There's your ear worm (You're welcome!).
Barb had us in cuteness overload with these donkeys in gingham PJs smiling in their sleep. She's added a bunch of Peter Rabbits around the border as well, because too much cuteness is just never enough where baby quilts are concerned.
Di B has been spreading her wings and trying foundation paper piecing. Stunning work! The amazing circular geese at the centre of this block are from a pattern by Jeli Quilts (Kelly Liddle) available on Craftsy as a downloadable PDF.
Remember the workshop last month, when Di B showed us how to use foundation paper piecing to stitch a mini braid quilt? Well, four of us have finished, and here are our results.
This first one is by Di B in her trademark blue, white and yellow.
Di C preferred to tweak the basic pattern and use her mini braids to frame a flower fairy panel.
In a little surprise, her Blanket of Love is reversible, with a different flower fairy panel in the middle.
Rather than staggering her braid pieces, Barb chose to assemble hers in more of a chevron pattern, crisp and pretty. How about those panda bears!
Finally, here's my version, in rainbow ombré braids. Di B and I are in a little group on Instagram currently trying to sharpen our free motion quilting skills by doing 10 minutes' practice a day and posting a photo of our work, warts and all :-( So I decided to use this quilt as a practice piece for quilting feathers.
Of course there were plenty of other works-in-progress but I'll share these next month when, hopefully, they will be all finished. You have some treats in store!
A few months ago Di B made a really pretty mini braid quilt, in a Blanket of Love size, and after some persuasion she agreed to demonstrate, at St Mark's Quilters yesterday, how to create those intricate looking braids.
Having always thought I'd like to make a braid quilt, but putting it in the 'too hard' basket, I looked forward to having the process demystified.
Coincidentally, Sydneysiders woke to a literal fog yesterday morning. No ferries were running on the Harbour in this pea-souper, and planes were being diverted from landing at Sydney Airport.
This was my view of the city. A forest of high-rise towers was out there somewhere, but I couldn't see the forest beyond those trees ;-)
Di's instructions for our little lesson were to bring around half an icecream container of scraps cut into 1 inch wide strips, but I sorted mine into pink, blue, green and yellow, and graded them from dark to light. I had a plan ;-)
The secret to these particular mini braids, with 'strands' that finished a tiny half an inch wide, lay in using foundation papers.
If you're not familiar with this, it's a technique where the fabrics are laid on one side of the pre-printed paper and the stitching is done along the marked lines, following a numbered order, on the other side.
There were more than a few tiny cries of anguish from around the room, and some 'frog stitching' (rippit,rippit) until we each managed to find our rhythm and began building up some very pretty braids.
In the picture below, clockwise from top right, are braids-in-progress by Di C, Gail, Gillian and Barb.
I think you'll agree that, as techniques go, it looks a little messy, and it takes a little imagination to envisage the end result. It's not until all those 'strands' (in this case, 48 of them) have been stitched to the foundation paper that it can be turned to the back and all those raggedy edges trimmed off using a ruler and rotary cutter.
Here's my first braid once I'd finished and trimmed it.
Di B sewed along with us too, making another braid quilt out of left overs from her first. This pattern is just wonderful for quilters like us who feel we have to squirrel away every tiny scrap!
The final step, before you can use those pretties, is to remove the paper, and there are a couple of techniques you can use before you start that might make this easier.
* Set your machine to use a very short stitch. This makes it much easier to tear the paper along those stitching lines. Of course it makes for extra stress if you need to do any unpicking. Ask me how I know.
* My friend Sue M likes to use a Hera marker (from Clover) and a ruler to score along the stitching lines on her foundation paper before she starts. If you have the patience to do this (I didn't) take care that you're not too heavy handed as you can weaken the paper.
* Another friend Perdita 'sewed' along the lines before starting, using her machine without her needle threaded. You can see the perforations in my photo of her braid below. I think the key here is, again, not to weaken the paper too much, so using a longer stitch length would be helpful.
As usual there was plenty happening at St Mark's Quilters.
Michaela popped in to see us with a finished kindy quilt and some very cute show-and-tell, a Cat in the Hat themed kindy quilt just waiting for the binding to be stitched down.
Susie stitched away at her machine and finished a pretty fairy tale pink Blanket of Love.
Gail arrived with this soft little Blanket of Love all finished.
Barb had two cute Blankets of Love finished.
And Perdita arrived with three lovely Blankets of Love tucked under her arm!
It's great to see quilters like Perdita becoming more confident as they sharpen their free motion quilting skills with these manageable little quilts.
And I mustn't forget to say we had fun!
