Petite Button Flowers

Now that the quilt show is past, I've been able to spend some time in my happy place:  creating in my studio.  This past weekend, I spent some time clearing out some of the clutter that had accumulated:  papers, coupons, random fabrics, etc.  Whenever organization inspiration strikes, its time to visit my other happy place:  IKEA.  We picked up a few small items including a small filing cabinet that fits perfectly under my sewing machine.  This little addition will greatly help to maximize my prime realty (space near my sewing machine) and help to contain my ever expanding thread collection and other quilting notions.  While I had a pretty impressive to do list lined up for Monday, I scrapped most of it and spent most of the day in my newly tidy and organized studio working on finishing the second miniature quilt in the McCalls Mini Madness Quilt Along series:  Button Flowers.  

This pattern calls for a variety of woven plaids for the background.  Whereas the inspiration quilt featured plaids in forest greens, brick reds, tans and browns (so not my colors), Instead, I pulled out an assortment of bright and cheery woven plaids and stripes from my stash to cut 1" strips to be sewn into miniature Chinese Coin units.  Fortunately this particular pattern is fairly forgiving in the event your seams are slightly off.  I loved the glow created from several of the bright plaid fabrics!!  

Top left clockwise:  woven fabrics, 1" strips, chinese coin units, pieced background.  

Now that my quilt top was done, it was time to embellish with quilted texture, applique vines and button flowers!  I went a little crazy with quilting cursive e's and l's on either side of the blue bars and around the border, and figure eights across the Chinese Coins units.  Then it was time to applique on my lime green vines and leaves.  The quilt along used bias bars for the vines and freezer paper for the leaves.  I tried the bias bars for the vines but if making this quilt again, would have opted for my bias tape makers.  As for the leaves, I tried ironing the edges around the freezer paper but the pieces were so small and I kept burning my fingers.  So I used fusible interfacing instead and turned the leaves inside out trying my best to get crisp points and edges.  

Adding Texture to my top (left to right):  Basted top, quilted top, appliqued top.

Last but not least was hand sewing on all the button flowers which really transform the entire quilt and add that final pop of color and texture.  While selecting buttons, I decided to add one more little surprise to my quilt:  2 lady bug buttons.  

Look what's blooming in our garden

Petite Button Flowers  - Finished 16" x 21"

Up next Dainty Dresdens, the third in the Mini Madness Quilt Along, as well as a few other fun quilt projects.  So hopefully more frequent posts in the upcoming weeks/months!