My local Modern Quilt Guild, the Greenville MQG, recently had a challenge to create a mini quilt (no more than 36" on a side) using white, gray, and black fabrics (solid or print) along with a pop of just one color. The reveal was last weekend and I would love to show you the mini and take you through my process of making it.
I have been in sort of a minimalist kick recently, wanted to play with the petal shape, and wanted a chance to try out
Lara from BuzzinBumble's Crafted Applique technique (that she teaches in her Crafted Applique book).
With those parameters, I started with some Kona black and some petal shapes I cut out of construction paper. I cut a bunch of different sizes of petals to play with them and decide on number, size, and orientation before cutting into actual fabric. I was originally going to cut the petals using a template, but I really liked how my slightly imperfect paper petals looks so I decided to cut the fabric petals freehand too.
To make sure that there would be no black shadowing through the petals I used two layers of white fabric (each treated with the crafted applique technique). The petals were really stiff so I would not do this on a lap or bed quilt, but for my small wall hanging it was perfect and no black showed through the white.
Now for the pop of color - I had some Timeless Treasures white and black striped fabric and loved how it looked with the white petals and black background. I needed a pop of color and tried a bunch of other prints and solids, but kept coming back to the striped fabric.
Just for fun, I decided to paint the fabric to color the white part of the fabric a color using my children's Crayola washable water color paints. I had a great time "creating" new fabrics and tried out a bunch of colors until I settled on a dark teal/blue color. I will admit that I was not thinking about longevity of the colors (more on that later in the story).
So I painted a bunch of the striped fabric with the teal/blue paint, let it dry, applied the crafted applique technique, and then cut out some petal shapes.
I attached all of the petals onto the back fabric by machine stitching along the outer edge of the petal, then layered the quilt top to prepare for quilting. I outlined the petals and then filled in all of the negative space with pebbles. Because the quilt was so small (18" x 22") the quilting went pretty quickly. I used a black Aurifil 40 wt (number) for the background quilting to match the Kona black. The 40 wt is just a little thicker than my usual 50 wt and helps the quilting show up more.
I was originally going to face the quilt, but when I had basted it and saw the batting behind the quilt top, I really liked how the quilt top looked framed so I bound the quilt using white fabric.
After the quilt was bound, I noticed that the petals were getting pretty wavy due to the fact that the background was heavily quilted and the petals were not quilted at all. So after the quilt was already bound I went back and added the extra quilting in the petals using white Aurifil 50 wt (2024). I used the 50 wt because I did not want the quilting to overshadow the petals.
At this point, I was way ahead of schedule and then quilt sat for about a month. The day before the quilt meeting (and challenge reveal), I noticed that my pop of color no longer had the same amount of pop as it once had, the blue had faded to a much lighter blue. So I sat in my kitchen and recolored in all of the blue parts with paint again.
If I were to remake this quilt I would have quilted the entire background before applying the applique and would definitely have looked into more permanent coloring options designed for fabric to add the color.
We had a great turnout for the challenge with 10 mini quilts being submitted and I got 3rd place for my quilt.
I love that challenges, they are a great reason to try something new (design, technique, etc) and for someone who is not an applique lover, Lara's Crafted Applique technique is awesome and makes applique much quicker and easier!
