Home Sweet Home

Thursday, March 10, 2016

I've been working on some secret sewing projects that I can't share yet, but this mini quilt was a quick make, and I can share it with you!

house mini quilt

Early last month, RJR Fabrics sent me two fat quarter bundles of their Cotton Supreme Solids to work with! Brenda Ratliff of Pink Castle Fabrics (and Just a Bit Frayed) curated twelve different solid bundles of ten fabrics each as part of the Color Inspirations Club. If you sign up for the club, you receive ten solids each month for twelve months - 120 fabrics in all! In conjunction with the club, RJR released twelve free mini quilt patterns from various pattern designers to highlight the different colorways.




I received both the "Fleur" and "Serengeti" colorways.


After looking through all of the free quilt patterns, I finally decided to make "Welcome Home" as a housewarming gift for my brother and his fiancé. The pattern is written by Just a Bit Frayed and can be downloaded for free here.


The pattern is extremely well-written from both a design sense and technical sense. Very well done.

I chose to use the Fleur colorway for this mini quilt. A few reds/pinks, a couple aquas, a couple greens, and a couple grays. It doesn't seem too girly, but also doesn't shout bachelor pad. Perfect combo for newlyweds.


The fabrics have a soft hand and sewed up beautifully.

I was able to cut all the pieces for each color from just two 2.5" strips from the long side of each fat quarter. Which means I still have a lot of fabric left!


(I love these pictures. Reminds me of suburbia houses all in a row. And how suburbia always pushes against the countryside. We used to live in a house like that - where you could spit and hit the neighbor's house.)


I chain pieced all the pieces, so the quilt top came together very quickly. Seriously. Only one sewing session - and that's with two toddlers running around!


I think that pink and green block in the middle of the bottom row is my favorite block in the quilt. Such a strange color combination. But it reminds me of my maternal grandmother. I can't even pinpoint why. Maybe I'm remembering her pink and green antique dishes? Who knows.


(A behind-the-seams look!)


I chose a backing fabric from my stash. It is from the fabric line Ooh-la-la by Dana Brooks of Lazy Daisy Cottage for Henry Glass.


I used my walking foot on my Bernina 930 Record to quilt vertical straight lines with white thread 1/2" apart.


The binding fabric is the deep red wine color from the Fleur group.


My "new thing" that I tried with this quilt was a different colored bobbin thread than the top thread when stitching on the binding. I used white thread on top to match the quilting, but a deep red thread in the bobbin to match the binding on the back. It worked perfectly!


I used to hate binding. My first Instagram post was 46 weeks ago, and it even included the hashtag, #bindingisnotmyfavorite. However, since then, I have perfected my method. The binding on this quilt is my best one yet! It may also have something to do with the fact that I've made 37 quilts in that same time period!



One day, I will write up a tutorial on how I do my binding. I machine stitch it down, but have several tips and tricks that would help if you hand sew it too.


This is my 13th quilt finish for the year (my 54th quilt of all time). I've almost met my goal of 16 quilts in 2016! And it's only March!


All that's left is to print and iron on a label for the back, then it will be ready to mail!

house mini quilt

Beautiful fabrics and a well-written pattern make this a project worth repeating!

house mini quilt

Disclaimer: I received the fabric for free and agreed to make a mini quilt and blog about it.

house mini quilt

1 comment:

Thank you for visiting and for your comments! I try to reply to comments via email, so if you're expecting a response and don't hear from me, check if you're a no-reply blogger. Happy sewing!