Portals Mini Quilt

As I mentioned last month, we're doing a Mini of the Month series for 2026 in the Stash Artists membership. Portals is the mini quilt pattern for February and I'm so in love with this little quilt!

I love that picture, too, even if it doesn't show the whole quilt. My sister-in-law and I went out snowshoeing Sunday afternoon, and I took Portals along to try to get pictures. We really wanted to stand it up against these trees, but it kept flopping over as soon as she let go of it, which made us laugh every single time 🤣 We finally managed to get that picture above, and then had to give up on trying to get a straight picture of the whole quilt there.

Instead, here's one of me holding it.

And another one that shows the beautiful scenery. This is just a few minutes trek through the woods behind our house.

Portals was inspired by some of the books I've read over the past few years:

• The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix Harrow
• The Starless Sea, by Erin Morgenstern
• Every Heart a Doorway, by Seanan McGuire
• The Unmaking of June Farrow, by Adrienne Young

In all of the books, characters find themselves traveling to other places and/or times through doorways they find. Aside from sharing the 'traveling through doors' part, the books are all wildly different and I'd be hard pressed to pick a favourite (though Every Heart a Doorway lands at the bottom of the list. It was okay, but not on the same level as the others). I guess it's like how we can make four quilts using Friendship Star blocks and they'd all be different 😊

A version of this design had been sitting in my EQ8 files for a couple of years, but I wasn't enthused enough about it to make it. That version was larger, with all the 'doors' coloured the same and lined up perfectly. I think I was going for a Roman aqueduct kind of look, but it wasn't working. When I was looking through my designs a few months ago, I tried colouring them all differently and staggering the middle row, and that's when I saw them as similar to the doorways in the books.

Of course, in the books the doors are scattered around here, there, and everywhere. The characters are either hunting for them or stumbling upon them, depending on the book. They're not all gathered neatly in one place where the character could look from one to the other and choose where to go. That works well for a book, but not so well for a mini quilt!

I chose the name Portals rather than Doors because I wanted to reference the fact these aren't ordinary doors just leading to the next room. They're portals leading to somewhere totally different and I had a lot of fun choosing fabrics that made me feel like I wanted to travel to the places behind them.

The doors are applique, with bias tape applique for the frame around them. That means the quilt top was really quick to put together. 

For the quilting, I used Aurifil 50 wt thread to match each of the doors and echoed the shape of the door, working my way in to the middle of the door. Then I used navy Aurifil to quilt three lines in the 'floor' under the two upper rows of doors. That fabric looks black in the pictures, but it is navy. Then for the background, I used white Aurifil to outline the doors and echo that line again, then I quilted a dense stipple all over the background. As always, I love how the quilting looks on the back!

There must have been a couple of snowflakes on the camera that created those blurry spots.

As you can see, I did all the echo quilting with my free motion foot, so the lines are organic and straight-ish rather than the perfectly straight and evenly-spaced lines they could be if I used my walking foot. I really don't enjoy quilting with my walking foot, though, so I prefer to embrace the imperfections of free motion quilting.

Making mini quilts every month is definitely helping with my stash of small pieces of Warm and Natural batting. Of course, I'm also making larger quilts, which produce those small off-cut pieces, so it's a never-ending cycle!

If you love scrappy and stash-friendly patterns (and mini quilt patterns!), come join us in Stash Artists! Along with the patterns, we also sew together over Zoom once a month, which is always a lovely time of community.

What fabrics would you use for your doors? And where/when would you want to travel?

Shining Softly Quilt

Welcome to another TGIFF party! And if you're thinking, "Gee, Leanne has hosted TGIFF twice already this month" you'd be correct 😆 As one of three TGIFF managers (along with Laura and Anja), I take care of making sure the linky party runs smoothly during January, which means stepping up to host when there's no other host signed up. If you blog and you'd like to host the party, there are plenty of open spaces in 2026 and we'd love to have you! You can sign up here (hosting is really easy, I promise!).

And now on with the party! This week I'm sharing the quilt that was actually my last finish of 2025, and the Stash Artists pattern for January, Shining Softly.

Don't ask me why, but in my head Friendship Star blocks have a 'correct' way to lean (to the right, if you're wondering), so having them purposely lean in both directions felt very odd to me. But I love the jewel shape that creates in the space between the stars!

As always, I had fun digging into my stash for the right fabrics for my stars. I did have to buy a few, though, because I didn't have enough pink or purple blenders to not repeat any. Oh darn, right?

I coloured this design a lot of different ways on my computer before I settled on the one I actually wanted to make. While I'm not a huge lime green fan, I feel like it really makes this colour palette sing. And having the colours run diagonally is so much more interesting than if they went straight across.

While I was piecing the stars and assembling the top, I wavered back and forth about how to quilt it. Part of me wanted to do something to highlight the shapes in the negative space, but I couldn't decide what. Another part of me wanted to quilt something swirly to emphasize the way the stars seem to be dancing across the quilt. As you can see, the swirly part of me won. I used Aurifil 1125 50 wt for all of the piecing and the quilting.

I was kind of obsessed with how the sun being low in the sky really made the quilting texture stand out.

I took these pictures the same day I took the pictures of Thread Love, which meant it was a snowshoes-required kind of photo shoot. Since then, we've had even more snow! It's several feet deep in our backyard now, and there's more in the forecast for tonight. It just keep coming!

If you love stash-friendly patterns like Shining Softly, come join us in Stash Artists! We're doing a Mini of the Month series in 2026 along with what I'm calling our 'main' patterns every other month, plus we get together virtually to sew every month. We'd love to welcome you into the community 💖

Now it's your turn! What have you finished recently? Link it up below and be sure to visit some of the other links to celebrate their finishes, too 😊

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Thread Love Mini Quilt

I'm happy to finally get to share my Thread Love mini quilt with you! For 2026, I'm doing a Mini of the Month series in the Stash Artists membership and Thread Love is our first mini quilt pattern.

When quilters first started raving about Aurifil, I avoided trying it for a couple of years. I knew people seemed to really love it, but I also knew I wouldn't be able to get it at my local quilt shop, which meant I'd have to think ahead enough to order it before I actually needed it. Then I won a small spool (it was 1231, Spring Green, if I remember correctly). I held onto that little spool for a while, before finally breaking down and trying it. As a suspected I would, I loved it and started making the switch away from the Gutermann polyester thread I had been using up to then (and could buy at a little shop within walking distance of my house). It has been the only thread I use for years now, for piecing and quilting, by hand and by machine, though I still can't buy it locally and have to remember to think ahead to order what I need. I've also been known to send Aiden to East Coast Quilt Co. in St. John's before he comes home, so he can bring thread with him. All of that to say that, even though I'm not a big fan of the colour orange, I still had to make my spools Aurifil orange. 

I had so much fun choosing fabrics for my 'thread'! My go-to colour palette these days seems to be pinks, purples, and teals; those colours have been together in Inner Beauty, my quilting tattoo, and two quilts I've been working on over the past few days. In Thread Love, the pinks, purples, and teals really pop against the navy background and the orange spools are another kind of pop.

Since no quilter ever has all new spools of thread, I included full spools and partial spools in the design.

For the quilting, I decided to outline each spool twice, then I quilted a dense loopy meander all over the background. The spools aren't quilted, so they stand out nicely. As always, the quilting is especially noticeable on the solid pink back.

I think this one will eventually go on my sewing room wall. I have one long wall that is still almost completely bare that I want to use for mini quilts, but first I want to add the word 'CREATE'. I haven't decided yet how I want to do the word (Wood letters? Painted directly on the wall? Something else?), so while I've pondered that for a couple of years the wall has stayed blank. All I know at this point is that I want it to be something other than a quilt, to be different from the quilts that will be on the wall around it. If you have suggestions for a fun way to add a word to a wall, let me know!

Have you noticed the snow all around the quilt in these pictures? We got 90 cm (35") of snow over the course of a few days (including Christmas Day), and had to use our snowshoes to get into the backyard to take the pictures. While beach photo shoots are my favourite, the ones that require snowshoes are my second favourite. There's something ridiculous about tromping around the backyard in snowshoes to take pictures of quilts that entertains me. 

If you like the idea of a Mini of the Month series and you also love stash-friendly patterns and virtual sewing with friends, join us in the Stash Artists membership! The doors are open this week and you'll receive access to the Thread Love pattern as soon as you join. (And if you're seeing this post after the doors have closed, join the waitlist so you'll be notified when they open again.)

I'm hosting TGIFF again this week, so link up your finishes! And please consider hosting the party; our hosting schedule for 2026 is looking very bare. You can sign up to host here. Be sure to visit some of the other links to celebrate their finishes, too.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter