It's All About Minis Today

Ove the last two months I have made a few lovely mini quilts. There used to be time when I had no idea what to do with a mini, I did not even see a point in making one because they seemed to be simply useless to me. How wrong I was! There are so many things you can do with mini quilts. You can hang them on a wall to decorate your place or sewing room, you can use them as a place mat or a mug rug or even use it as a trivet and of course they make lovely gifts. I like using mine on our dining table under a vase with flowers or a small stack of books. I also enjoy using them as working mats while doing some hand sewing in the living room. I realised that the most important idea behind a mini quilt is trying new patterns, ideas, new challenging techniques and showcasing your skills and pretty fabrics and they are simply fun to work on.

I wanted to keep track of my fabric stash for a long time, but I never could organise myself to do that and with time passing by I lost any point in doing that. Earlier this year I started working on a beautiful "Tenderness" quilt that I am going to tell you all about very soon. I am using Liberty Tana Lawn fabric for this project and I really had to keep track of all the Liberty prints I have so I would not buy doubles and have a better idea of combining prints. I came across a stack of word cards on a ring and it seemed like a great idea to make Liberty swatches with. That's exactly what I did. Now I have all the prints handy and all the names available when I am sewing or doing extra fabric shopping. So... while making the cards, looking at all these tiny Liberty squares together made me want to sew a mini...

...and that's exactly what I did. Nine Liberty squares mixed with linen and a touch of hand quilting using a vintage cotton thread. I made nine squares, but once it was all finished, I made a label for the quilt, but it turned out to be too cute to be placed on the back of the mini. I had to cover one of the liberty squares unfortunately, but I really like the look of the label on the front of this mini quilt. It sits on our dining table right now with a vase of flowers on top and it makes me smile every time I look at it. Liberty is always so so pretty!

I love this photo! All these prints from the Woodland Clearing collection together almost look like a painting that needs to be framed. When Elise from Elise & Emilie announced on Instagram that she was looking for testers for her new "Hearts of Friendship" mini quilt pattern, I could not help myself but jump into it. I am so glad I did because this mini is an absolute pleasure to sew. I knew exactly what fabric and lace I wanted to use for it. I only could not decide between those two prints at the bottom, but with some friendly advice from some Instagrammers, I chose the dark one.

Making fabric hearts is so easy and very addictive, I have to say. I spent a lovely evening sewing them one after another. It still amazes me that you can create something unique and special with a piece of cloth. Can you guess what is my favourite tool in this photo? Yes! The kid-sized chopstick! I have been using it for years now, pretty much since the day I started sewing and I love it. It's so useful for turning out small details and pushing out the corners.

I used a vintage thread in this beautiful ocean colour to quilt the mini. I was deciding between the dusted rose and ocean (these are purely my names) and I am glad I went with the blue shade. It makes the hearts "pop" a bit more. My newly discovered entomology pins are proving to be very helpful when working with finer fabrics. I keep a small magnetic needle minder inside a small tin and store some of the pins in there. It makes it much safer with my Little One always next to me in my sewing space.

I could not be more happier with the finished result. It was an absolute pleasure to work on this mini. You can have a look at all of the other amazing versions of this pattern here on Instagram. Thank you Elise for this wonderful opportunity! If you have not made any minis yet, this pattern could be the right one for you. It's easy, quick and a lot of fun.

Happy sewing everybody and thank you for stopping by! Larisa xox