Merry Mini Pattern Release

I had no intentions of releasing a Christmas pattern this year. If I had intended to, I would have done it months ago, rather than in the middle of December! Lack of intentions aside, I'm excited to introduce you to the Merry Mini pattern today 😊 

I've been making ornaments for my grandmother for Christmas for years. This fall, though, she moved into a care facility so she won't be setting up a tree anymore. Since ornaments are out, I decided to make her a mini quilt to hang on the door to her room. Then once I had it designed, I thought maybe you'd like to have the pattern for this quick Merry Mini, too, so here we are with a mid-December pattern release. Head to my shop to download the PDF Merry Mini pattern. Stash Artists members, I've added Merry Mini to the membership as a bonus pattern, so login to your account to download it.

Merry Mini stitches up pretty quickly, so you may even have time to make one before this Christmas. If not, you can be well prepared for next year!

The part that takes the longest is the hand embroidery for 'Merry Christmas,' but even that doesn't take very long. I did chain stitch with three strands of embroidery floss for mine, which creates a nice thick line. You could also use Aurifil 12 wt thread (which I planned to do until I realized I don't have red) or perle cotton. If you don't want to do chain stitch, you could do backstitch or stem stitch instead.

The trees are a combination of strip piecing (no, you don't have to deal with tiny brown squares for the trunks!) and paper piecing. As always, I recommend using freezer paper for the paper piecing because who has time to be ripping off the paper at the end? Even if it is only two seams, I still prefer just peeling off the freezer paper when the block is done, rather than carefully removing regular paper.

I was ready to start quilting this while my Janome was down, so all the brown, red, and green parts were quilted on my Kenmore. Thankfully the quilt is small, so the smaller throat space wasn't an issue. I started quilting the background on the Kenmore, too, then switched back to my Janome once it was fixed last Friday. I'm thrilled to have my Janome functional again (it just needed a small adjustment and a new bobbin holder), but the little Kenmore did a fine job filling in.

I quilted swooping lines to imitate garland in the trees, with back and forth lines in the trunks. The squares got swooping lines, too, from corner to corner. It's the same as the continuous curve quilting, except I did one square at a time since they're not connected.

Then I had fun stitching a snowflake meander in the background, leaving an organic space unquilted around the embroidery.

All of that looks so good on the solid red backing fabric, especially the white snowflake meander!

This tone-on-tone red crosshatch print that I've had for a while is perfect as the binding and of course I added one of my labels.

I actually made two Merry Minis at the same time. One will soon be in the mail to my grandmother and the other is for my book club gift exchange. I took advantage of a bit of time this afternoon to get pictures, but the quilts both still need their hanging tabs. I made them this evening following this tutorial, so now they're ready to be attached with a bit of hand stitching. Then the quilts can be hung from a nail or Command Hook with a dowel and a bit of ribbon.

If you want to make your own Merry Mini, the PDF pattern is in my shop now. Printed patterns will come sometime in the new year.

In my head, this little mini is just the first of a series I could make for Nanny to decorate her door to go with the seasons. Will the others move from my head into fabric form? I don't know yet, but I hope they will. In the meantime, I'm really happy with how Merry Mini turned out, and I'm excited to have the pattern out in the world, too.