Minimal i Mini Quilt

Curated Quilts is a new quarterly quilt journal, created by Amy Ellis and Christine Ricks, which features beautiful images of modern quilts and articles about artists, their work, and the quilting community. Each issue has a call for mini quilt submissions with a theme and color palette. The theme for issue three is minimal and the palette appealed to me. We were asked to use only a subset of: light grey, leaf green, grey, orchid pink, blue grey, black.

I started by pulling all the solids from my stash that fit these requirements. I didn't have any blue grey and ended up editing out the greys. My mini has Kona Cerise, Peapod, and Black. I brought in the grey with my quilting (Aurifil #2605). I also pieced the entire quilt with black (Aurifil #2692) thread since every seam had black fabric. My mini finished at approximately 13.5" square.

One of my goals for the year is to design with letters of the alphabet. I thought this challenge was the perfect opportunity to choose a letter and use it in my minimal design. I quickly landed on the letter i. Often I piece a quilt top and then I consider quilting option. For this project I considered my plan for quilting from the beginning, choosing to quilt the entire black background with 1/8" matchstick quilting so the vibrant letter i's stand out. This might be the first time I've been set on the quilting motif before taking a single stitch.

I began my quilting by stitching in the ditch on my vertical seams, then used a guide to quilt vertical lines every one inch.

I continued stitching between each line of quilting. This photo shows how I eyeballed the center of each section... those are 1/2 inch sections on the right, 1/4 inch in the middle, and 1/8 inch on the left.

My goal was 1/8 inch spacing. Here's the super closeup. :-)

The tricky part was starting and stopping around the pink and green pieces. Tons of threads to bury! In the end, all that work was totally worth it!

I chose a faced binding so the quilting and the pink pieces would go right to the edge. I use this technique for my faced binding, though I press the folded edge before attaching it to the quilt. ;-)

Thanks for visiting! It's been so fun to see what other have created for this challenge. Check them all out on the CQ call for entries. I've also linked up to Needle and Thread Thursday.

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22 thoughts on “Minimal i Mini Quilt

    1. sarah

      Post author

      Good question. I was "all in" for 1/8" spacing. As you can see in one photo, I finished at least one section of 1/8" spacing before I'd gotten the other sections all to 1/4". On a larger project I'd be more cautious of this and quilt consistently across the whole quilt until I felt done. As my friend Mel pointed out, every time you add another pass you double the quilting time. In this case I think it worked in my favor, because I may have stopped at 1/4" if I'd had the option (but I'm really happy with 1/8"). Thanks for visiting, Yvonne!

      Reply
  1. Mel

    Pretty fabulous--colors, design and texture! That matchstick quilting is superb and really highlights your pieced design!! Good luck!

    Reply
  2. Laura

    I really love this one. And whoa on all those ends but yes, the effect is totally worth it - great combo of design + quilting.

    Reply
    1. sarah

      Post author

      Thank you, Laura! I'm thrilled with the effect though I'm kinda of dreading my next matchstick quilted project. Since it's lap size maybe I'll stick to 1/2" spacing. ;-)

      Reply
    1. sarah

      Post author

      It's really kind of baffling to me that it took two full bobbins to quilt this little thing. Fun fact: I was aiming for 14" square but my bobbin ran out in the middle of a line of quilting, so I just made the mini a little smaller. ;-)

      Reply
  3. Helen Glover

    I am fascinated by your technique as I have tried something similar and had problems. Will keep your ideas in mind if I do this again. thanks for sharing it.

    Reply
  4. This mini is one of my very favorites that you've done. And I ****love**** that you're also a stickler for details in quilting start/stops that results in lots of burying. The little details like that really make a difference, don't they? I get a lot of funny looks, though, clearly saying, "Why would you do that? It's way too much work, just travel/backtrack." It just makes a world of difference in the end result.

    Reply
  5. Felicity

    Oh my goodness - what a fabulous mini! Peapod is one of my very favourite Kona colours.

    On behalf of the global hosts, thank you for participating in the Finish A Long!

    Reply

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