Thursday, February 17, 2022

Playing with a miniature block

The finished 5" block

A friend challenged several of us with a tiny little block that she found somewhere online. I don't know where so can't credit the quilter.

The Challenge

I figured the small blocks finished at an inch.  Since I was bored with the Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt I was supposed to be sewing it looked like a fun challenge.  I already had most of the quarter square units waiting for me to do something with them, so I dug them out.

The tiny quarter square units cut down to 1.25 inches.

I didn't want to work with block as small as one half inch finished so I decided to make them one quarter inch larger. I had to trim the already made quarter square triangles down to 1.25 inches. That was no problem.  (Some were 1.5" and some were 1.75".)  

They were all made with beautiful hand dyed Cherrywood fabric that another friend had passed on to me when she finished cutting for a quilt.

pinwheel layout

As I worked on the layout  I decided to make as many pinwheels as I could without sewing any more color combo's.  (That was three pinwheels.)

sewing on my Singer 99K handcrank.

So I sewed them together and thought they were beautiful 
My initial 16 patch.

However it seemed very  unfinished and small.  It was 3.5 inches.  

It's too small.

I had more of the Cherrywood fabrics so I chose four of the colors and did a square in a square block design.  That made it finish at 5".  That was much better.

Looking for backing and binding

I was happy with this size and searched for a fabric for backing.  I think I found the perfect fabric and got to work making a sandwich and quilting the tiny thing.  

I drew the quilt design on the top with Clover's water erasable blue marker.  That was a mistake.  When I was done quilting I spritzed the piece with water to make the lines go away and discovered I used too much water.  Some of the fabric dye bled into the yellow fabric.

I was not a happy camper.

I put on the binding anyway and tried to decide what to do.

After brooding over it for a day I decided that I might be able to hide the worst of the bleeding with an embroidery "design element."  Thus you have the little floral accents at the start of the quilted flower.

It was fun to make this little block. However I do not need to make any more right now.  I am back to working on the Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt.

Hugs,

Nancy


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