Make Mine Mini!

For a while I've flirted with the idea of miniature quilts.  Not many people in my guilds do them.  I mean, I think I remember one being shown at Sew'N'Tell a year or two ago.  That's it.  And they kind of seem like a waste of time.  I mean, what do you do with them?  But on the other hand, they're so cute!  And they don't use up much time or material compared to the wallhangings and bed quilts I do....

So occasionally I've picked up a back issue of Miniature Quilts off the freebies table and perused.  But I've never actually taken any steps toward making a mini.

Until now.

I should have included a quarter or my hand for scale, but the quilt is 13" x 10".  There was a scrappier tumbler quilt in the Spring/Summer 1990 issue of Miniature Quilts, and I had picked up the cream and light blue scraps at the daytime guild last week.  I didn't want to deal with cutting templates, so I measured the pattern piece at 2" tall, cut strips that height, and used my dresden plate template to cut out the tumblers, same as I did for the Bright Tumblers bed quilt.  There was just enough of the blue and cream fabrics to make this piece.  The border/binding fabric, as well as the backing fabric (also a light blue) came from the freebies table at the evening guild.  And the batting was a scrap left over from bed quilts.

Start to finish, it took a little over 24 hours.  With lots of other stuff going on in there.  About half of the rows are hand-pieced because I was sewing while interacting with people and doing stuff.  And I will not lie, I tried hand-quilting this.  But I got through one row of tumblers and tore it all out and went to my machine.  At this juncture in my life, I don't have the patience for hand-quilting.  And I am just fine with that.