Mini Madness - Island Batik and Aurifil spools!

I was very delighted that our March challenge was Miniature quilts because I do love making miniatures!  I can remember loving small things even as a child - making dollhouses out of cardboard boxes and filling them with furniture.  I remember a neighbor lady showed me how to make a fabulous chair out of a soup can one day.  My favorite doll was a 6 inch high Dawn doll and since I was getting interested in sewing I had tons of ideas for making her outfits!  My friends and I liked collecting the small troll dolls as well - but they were a little harder to dress.  Those squatty bodies always looked funny in everything we made!

I'm still very delighted by tiny things and making mini quilts is just fun for me.  For this challenge I was all set to make a quilt from the Carol Doak Miniature book, but then when I was blog-reading I found the Sew Many Colors pattern and changed my mind.

I'm trying to think of some basketball analogies, but nothing fits!  I guess I'll have to go with baseball - it's a home run - a mini quilt, made out of Island Batik and Aurifil thread.  Three of my favorite things.

It was fun to hunt through my Island Batik fabrics looking for colors I liked for the spools - I only needed a small piece for each spool, so scraps were perfect for this project.  (Definitely one of my favorite things about mini quilts!)

I love the stripey green!  Perfect for a spool of thread, don't you think?

Before I knew it, I had the whole quilt pieced!

Now to decide how to quilt it!  I decided to do an all over grid.  I really didn't want to mess with marking it, so I decided that I could probably eyeball 1/2 inch spacing and started stitching!

I would stitch three lines to the right of the last line, then turn the quilt, and stitch 3 lines on the next side.  I had to do a little adjusting when I got near the edge, but it really doesn't show much.  Trim, add binding, and my quilt is finished!

I love it to death!  In fact, I plan on rearranging my mini wall to make the perfect place to feature this quilt!

Sew Cute!  I love foundation paper piecing with Island Batik fabrics!  They press perfectly and are so easy to work with.  And the colors - always beautiful!  I also used Aurifil 50 weight thread for the piecing and quilting of this quilt, I love the subtle look of quilting with it, and it's perfect for tiny seams because it lays so flat, even with the stitch length shortened for the foundation piecing.

I can't say that paper piecing in necessarily my favorite technique, but I found a couple things that do make it a bit easier.  I happened upon a video showing the Seam Allowance Guide from George Siciliano.  (It's a long video, but when I saw it, I knew I needed this ruler!)

I ordered it and used it to make this quilt, and it was super great!  It is so nice to have this one tool that you can use to fold your paper over, then make your cut with the ruler part.  Plus it can be used to cut 1/8 inch seams as well!  There is a bit of a learning curve with the cutting because of the thickness.  You do have to make sure to hold your rotary cutter straight and not angle the blade, because that will give you wonky cuts.  But I do love it, and probably will order the 12 inch quide soon.  The 8 inch guide was just barely big enough for some of the pieces in this quilt because of the weird angles.

The second thing I tried for the first time is June Tailor Foundation sheets.  They are a little spendy, but I really wanted something lighter than regular computer paper for this project.  I really did like using these sheets.  They are lightweight, you can see through them, which is very helpful, and they tear off easily.  I was skeptical about running them through my printer because they are so thin and kind of slippery, but they printed perfectly.  The package of 25 sheets will last me a while since I don't do a lot of paper piecing.  I was glad I had a good coupon to use, and it was nice not to have to wait for something to be shipped, so it was definitely convenient for me to be able to go pick them up at JoAnn's and start sewing right away.

Do you like making mini quilts?  Even if you don't like making them, surely you love seeing them!  Here is the list of Island Batik Ambassadors - you will love their Mini Madness posts, too.

• Nan from Purrfect Spots Designs
• Turid from Den Syende Himmel
• Stephanie from Quilt’n Party
• Pamela from Pamela Quilts (me!)
• Anna from Ark Angel Creations
• Kathy from Kathy’s Kwilts and More
• Jessica from Desert Bloom Quilting
• Connie from Freemotion by the River
• Kate from Seams Like a Dream
• Sharon from Yellow Cat Quilt Designs
• Tina from Quilting Affection Designs
• Jennifer from The Inquiring Quilter
• Barb from Bejeweled Quilts
• Sally from Sally’s Quilting Corner
• Jeanette from Inch Worm Fabrics
• Connie from Kauffman Designs
• Joan from Moosestash Quilting
• Bernadine from Needle and Foot
• Bea from Beaquilter
• Cheryl from Cheryl Lynch Quilts
• Maryellen from Mary Mack’s Blog
• Joyce from Hearts Creations
• Marlene from Kissed Quilts
• Karen from The Quilt Rambler
• Marian from Seams to be Sew
• Laura from Slice of Pi Quilts
• Linda from Inspired Layers
• Vicki from Vicki’s Craffs and Quiltling
• Nancy from Masterpiece Quilting
• Carol from FunThreads Designs
• Terri from Meanderings Along Lizard Creek
• Alison from Little Bunny Quilts
• Suzy from Adventurous Applique and Quilting
• Jean-Sophie from Sophie Junction
• Janet from Whispers of Yore

I am linked up with Myra of BusyHandsQuilts for Finished or Not Friday as well - lots of fun projects, come join in!

Month of the Mini Quilt

March must truly be Month of the Mini Quilt this year!

 This month's challenge for the Island Batik Ambassadors is to make a Mini quilt using either foundation or english paper piecing, and QuiltShopGal is having a Precision Piecing Quilt-Along.

 Plus that Aurifil thread has a contest to make a Sew Many Colors mini quilt with Kaufman's Kona fabrics.  I love miniatures, so am definitely having fun with these, and have tons of great ideas going through my head - just need more sewing time to have fun with them!


I have made a couple of the Mini blocks for the Precision Piecing Quilt-Along.  They are so tiny and cute!

They are not paper pieced, just regular traditional piecing!  I used one of my Island Batik Stash Builder rolls for these cutie blocks, but they aren't for my challenge.

My challenge is using the pattern for Sew Many Colors, but using Island Batik fabrics.  It's coming along wonderfully!  Batik fabric is wonderful for paper piecing because it presses so crisply.  I'm going to love hanging this little quilt by my sewing machine for sure!

Today's agenda is working on black dresses from Ponte knit for a local Choral group.  Not exciting so much for me, but the ladies are really excited to have some nice competition dresses, so that makes it kind of fun for me.  I'm just glad to feel well enough to do more sewing finally!

Happy Easter, plus Winners!

Sorry for being an absentee blogger this week.  I have been pushing hard to get projects for my customers done and out the door before my husband and I leave on a trip.  I'll show you some of them, but first I have a couple pieces of business to take care of!

First of all, the winner of my Quilt Quazy Queens blog hop prize is:

Billie S!

Billie is actually a real life friend of mine that I met in the local quilt guild years ago!  I am tickled pink that she was chosen to be the winner and have passed her information on to Marian, our Quazy Hop hostess, so I am sure she will be receiving her Timeless Treasure Fat Quarter Bundle soon.

There are still a few more prizes to grab - here are the last of the blogs to check out:

March 25

Just Let Me Quilt

Sew Many Yarns

Quilting Queen Online

Jane’s Quilting

After You leave your comments at the above blogs

Stop In To Enter also Marian's Featured Day

Seams to Be Sew

This week we also wrapped up the Creative New Quilts and Projects blog hop!  The winner of the book I gave away is:  Doris McCarty!  Congratulations, Doris - I have passed your information on to our hop sponsors, so you should be hearing from them soon as well.  This was a fun hop, it was really neat seeing what all the ambassadors did with the quilts in Wendy's book plus Island Batik fabric!  If you didn't see the posts, the list is on the Island Batik Blog - definitely worth checking out!

What's New in the Quilting Studio?

Mostly customer quilts this week!  I was putting the finishing touches on two quilts for a loyal customer in California.  Both of these were made with purchased kits.  She is a big cat fan, so I couldn't resist tempting her with this quilt.  I don't do that often, but I knew she would love it!

It's called Cat's Fancy but the kit is now sold out.  It was fun and pretty simple to make.  I chose this backing and love the way the quilting shows up on it:

I also made this table topper.  I posted a little about it earlier, but here is the finished quilt, along with all 20 in and out corners with binding sewn on - whew!

I finished piecing this top for a local friend who passed it on to me after finding it a bit difficult to deal with:

Lots and lots of y-seams in this one, but in the end it came out beautifully!

I also quilted a fish quilt, am in the process of making a t-shirt quilt and quilting another quilt.  I will get pictures of those next week before I send them off to their homes.  Plus I need to finish up my Mini for Island Batik's Mini Madness....

My little quilt still needs it's borders and to be quilted.  One of the great things about minis is they don't take much time, so I should be able to get to that this weekend.

 After all that, I definitely deserve a vacation!   I'm planning out some fun blog posts for next month.  I have lots of quilts that I have never blogged about, so will do something of a virtual quilt show and see if I can catch up on some of those quilts that have never made it to the spotlight!

Thanks to my new followers for joining in!  I hope you enjoy following along on my quilting adventures.  

Deciding the Layout for March MiniMadness quilt

I've been having fun making these little blocks and finished enough yesterday so I can decide how I want to lay them out!  I have many options:

Squares with light points in.

Squares with light point out.

Rotate the center squares.

I created 10 different layouts and could have continued on!  I picked the four I liked best and I hope you will help me choose which one to make!  In the layout below I have labeled them with A, B, C and D.  Leave a comment here or on my facebook page and let me know what you like!

Here they are:

Thanks for helping me come to a decision!

Island Batik Mini Madness

I am excited to be an Island Batik Ambassador this year!  They have cooked up a years worth of fun activities and challenges for us to work with.  This month is Mini Madness - and I am really excited about it!

I got off to a head start with the mini I am giving away for the Planes, Trains and Automobiles blog hop, but never fear - their will be plenty more mini madness happening on my blog, facebook, and instagram feeds!  

If you love minis too, you can check out my pinterest board.  So much inspiration there - what shall I make?  It will be fun deciding, that's for sure!

I received my first Ambassador box for the year and it was stuffed full of great fabrics and some Aurifil thread!  I usually use the 50 weight, so am excited to try the 40 weight thread for quilting.  Lots of fun fabrics, so expect lots of great projects coming up this year - here is a little sneak peak: 

Makes me want to go start cutting and sewing right now!

Only a couple days left for Planes, Trains and Automobiles!  Here are links for yesterday and today:

Wednesday, March 2 – Lavish
Freemotion by the River
Moose Stash Quilting

Thursday, March 3 – Fire Island
KISSed Quilts

Can't wait to see who wins the drawings!  Thanks for all your lovely comments and entries!  Don't forget to check out the Quiltsy Team blog this month - our Quiltsy Cares promo is featuring a different team member each day and the quilts they make to bring joy and comfort to others!