Picasso Mickey Mini

When Ellison Lane posted about the 2013 Modern Mini Quilt Challenge, I got excited - I missed the one last year and  I mean...mini?  Hell yes, it means I won't be working on something for months. And don't look at me that way...my husband looked at it and said it looked like a Picasso Mickey Mouse, and since it's a Minnie challenge (YES I JUST MADE A CRAPPY PUN) and I'm sure not going to ever come up with names for anything I make..I'm going with it.


My inspiration came from this lovely building.  I considering recreating it in the form it is, with squares and rectangles.  However, I've been making lots of english paper pieced hexies for an ongoing lap quilt, and I thought I'd try my hand at making something with EPP hexagaons, trapezoids, diamonds and triangles.

I used a variety of Kona and Kaffe Fasset shot cotton solids for the "building", Riley Blake shaded cotton in slate for the background and Essex linen in Steel for the binding.  I went a LOT liberal with my color choices because frankly, I didn't have anything quite right.



I've got to figure out how to securely fold/tuck under the seam allowance around the edges when I do EPP, I had a bit of trouble at a couple corners.  Of course one of the lovely blogs I follow posted some great tips about the subject right after I finished and I can't find the link to it.  Something to do with those mini irons.

Accuracy is something I don't seem capable of,  there was a lot of seam ripping along the way and a few more things I should've redone.  If I didn't know better I'd think I'd been drinking and sewing around some of those triangular corners!


Nevertheless it's weird and not what I had in my head at ALL, and I'm OK with that!  It's a good reminder to take things slower and put projects down for a day or two so I can look at them with fresh eyes and fix anything that needs to be fixed.  This mini quilt finished at an "almost-square" 11 inches.  And again I didn't leave myself a way to hang it ;)

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Another Paper Pieced Pillow

I've decided to stop counting the pillows piling up on my sofa, or I might find a reason to stop making them... Next on the docket was a simple paper pieced project, an 18" pillow cover to go over a boring pillow that came with our loveseat. Of course this doesn't match the stuff I've already made for it so I should work on my long term planning. I really LOVE self drafting patterns.

The shot cottons I have keep calling out to me, so I chose six different ones for this, and some Kona in bone.  It was pretty straightforward quilting, the walking foot for the neutral, and hand stitching in pearl cotton for the shot cottons.

The only problem I ran into is using the Pilot FriXion pens to mark for the hand quilting - it left pale markings behind it when ironed out.  They seem to be doing that on both light and dark fabrics now - I hear it comes out in the wash but I'm considering breaking up with them for embroidery at the minimum which is sad because they're SO convenient!

you can see the pale lines along the hand stitching