Fun Project: Miniature Quilt for Silent Auction

As per my usual MO, I finished this quilt about an hour before I had to leave for the Columbine Quilt Guild meeting.  I made it for the annual silent auction.

This little quilt is so colorful that it makes me smile.


Since I'm still loving the black-with-brights combo, I trotted out my bright fabric strips again.

 The idea for the wavy strip-pieced border strips is from Janice Gunner, whose article and instructions appeared in the April 2002 Quilters Newsletter.  She sews alternating long, skinny wedges together to make the strip sections.


If you're interested in how I created the flower, read on:

I created the pattern for the flower by tracing the circumference of a plate onto tagboard.  Then, I folded the circle into eighths (avoiding math!), and cut out one of the resulting wedges to use as a template for the eight flower sections.

When I cut out the eight wedges, I just added a 1/4" seam allowance all around.  I positioned the wedge template on selected sections of my strip-pieced large rectangle.

Once the eight sections were sewn together, I put the intact tagboard circle (I had made an extra) onto the sewn flower and turned under the outer edge using the template as a guide.  Starch helped set the fold.

Since the center of the flower was one big lump from all those seams coming together, I just cut it out, because I knew I was going to add a small center circle to the flower.

I machine appliqued the flower and border wavy lines to the black background fabric using a (somewhat) invisible stitch.

It still looked like it needed something, so I added some bobbin-work stitching around the center of the flower, the outside of the flower, and on the leaves.  I used all six strands of cotton embroidery floss and hand-wound it into my bobbin.  For the top thread, I used monofilament.

Finally, I quilted everything together, using outline stitching around all the appliqued pieces, and rather small stippling in the rest of the background.

I liked it so much that I wanted to keep it for myself!  Actually, I have enough strip-pieced sections to make another one, so I think I will.  I'll have to vary the design somewhat, though.  Who wants to make the same thing twice when you can do something different?

~Sandy