Mini-quilt

At last it's time to reveal my latest quilting project! Regular readers will know that I'm a member of a quilting group and, way back in January, we were issued with our 2013 challenge: to make a miniature quilt.

The challenge was inspired by this quilt by Leominster Quilters which one of our group had seen at a show (apologies for the awful photo of a photo). Like them we were each asked to make a mini-quilt  which would then be attached to a background to make a bigger quilt.

The only rule was that the quilt couldn't be more than 12 inches square. I knew almost immediately what I was going to make as I'd bought the book Easy paper-pieced miniatures by Carol Doak a few years ago and had never got around to using any of the patterns. After a browse through all the gorgeous designs I settled on 'Scrap Stars'...and then did absolutely nothing until the end of September! Clearly I work better with a pending deadline as it had to be submitted at our meeting last week.

If I'd been sensible, I'd have chosen a less fiddly pattern with fewer pieces. But who wants to be sensible when you can play with lots of brightly coloured bits of fabric :)

The only change I made from the original pattern was to adapt the border to make it fit the dimension requirements of the challenge.

It was love all the way until it came to putting it together and then I had a serious grump. Don't look too hard at the seams as the piecing is appalling. If I was to make a miniature again, I think I'd use a fabric foundation as the feed dogs on the sewing machine couldn't grip the paper very well, so it slid around and pulled the seams out of alignment. Frustratingly, I'd sewn with a really small stitch too to make it easier to rip off the paper foundation, so it was a real pain to unpick. In the end I just thought 'oh, sod it' and carried on. I'm getting much better at fighting my perfectionist tendencies and it's not as if I'm trying to craft some prize-winning masterpiece here!

The quilting is very simple 'in the ditch'. I did use spray glue for the first time to hold the layers together and was really pleased with how it worked. I know, I know, everyone has been using spray glue for years but I've always favoured the good old-fashioned tacking method. Part of the reason being that you need a big table and plenty of space to use glue on a full-size quilt so that you can smooth out all the layers and that's never been an option. I'm going to use it for my next quilt though as I'm doing the quilt-as-you-go method and the individual components should be small enough for the space I have.

Appalling piecing aside, I'm really pleased with how my mini-quilt turned out and enjoyed the whole process of making it.

At our November meeting last week it was finally time for us to reveal all and we excitedly unveiled our contributions to lots of oohs and aahs.

My favourite was this absolute stunner by Pam. My goodness but we have some really talented women in our group!

All of the quilts have now been taken away to be sewn to the background and the plan is to enter it in the Harrogate quilt show next year. It was so exciting to see our last group contribution there and I can't wait to see this one hanging at the show too! x