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.

Advent 2023 - Hope

It's the first week of Advent! We decorated for Christmas over the weekend, and now I'm writing this with the lights of the tree shining next to me. I love doing anything by the light of the tree!

For Advent this year, I'm sharing devotions I first shared in 2017. Sometimes it makes more sense to repost something than to try and reinvent the wheel. I hope you enjoy this examination of hope, peace, joy, and love over the next few weeks.

_______________________

Like so many others, I love this time of year. I love the decorations, the tree, the food and the music. More than anything, though, I love the reason we celebrate.

"For to us a child is born,

    to us a son is given,

    and the government will be on his shoulders.

And he will be called

    Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6).

Jesus came as a baby, born into this world to bring hope to a people who were completely hopeless. I'm not talking about the Jewish people, though they were hopeless under Roman rule at the time. Instead, I'm talking about the entire human race.

We are, after all, one people. Though we've divided ourselves according to religious difference and national borders, we are really one people and Jesus came to rescue us all.

I've been thinking about it like this: one of the little girls I babysit is named Edie. She's 18 months old and she loves to sit at my kitchen table and play. Sometimes, she wants to play with our Little People barn or one of our big Tonka trucks, but they're too big for her to get onto the table herself. She picks it up and tries to get it that high, but she can't do it, and by that point she's in such an awkward position that she can't put it down either.

That's when she starts calling out for me. "Help, help, help, help," she'll yell over and over until I come and take the toy from her and set it on the table.

We were like Edie. We had a burden too heavy for us to lift and impossible to put down. That burden, of course, was sin. Romans 3:23 says, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." All. There is no one who can say they have never sinned, except Jesus. That's what makes it possible for Him to remove that burden of sin from us and set us free. Verse 24 goes on to say, "and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus."

That is the hope that came to us as a people when Jesus was born in Bethlehem. That is the hope still offered to so many who are struggling in their sin, not knowing or not willing to accept that Jesus came to take their burden.

Without Jesus the entire human race was hopeless, without a way to escape from sin. But with Jesus? What hope we have!

Formal Garden in Morris Mist Fabrics

Welcome to my stop on the Morris Mist blog hop! Morris Mist is Sherry Shish's new signature line with Island Batik and the colours are so pretty! The purples, especially, are so rich. I decided to make a Formal Garden baby quilt and I love how it turned out! The Formal Garden pattern is available in my shop.

The 3 year old I'm looking after this year loves purple, so all while I worked on these blocks, I kept thinking of her saying multiple times every day, "Purple is my favourite colour of the rainbow!" You have to say that with as much enthusiasm as possible, to really get the full effect.

In the pattern, I included notes for cutting directional fabrics, so you can keep them properly lined up in the blocks. I appreciated that this time around, since it meant I didn't have to do any extra thinking for the couple of directional prints in the Morris Mist line.

Formal Garden blocks stitch up quickly, especially when you're only making enough for a baby quilt. Once the top was put together, I stitched some of my off-cut scraps of Warm and Natural batting together, and pieced the back. I've had this purple for years. It was almost big enough, so I just cut it and inserted a strip of one of the Morris Mist fabrics to make it fit.

Shortly after I started the quilting, I had a mishap with my Janome 6700. The bobbin holder (the black plastic piece the bobbin sits in) spun a quarter circle counter-clockwise while I was quilting! Everything seized up with a horrible thunking noise, as I'm sure you can imagine. This is what it looked like when I opened it up. If you look closely at the black plastic, just under the metal bar on the right, you can just see a tiny red spot that should be lined up with the red arrow on the metal piece right in front. 

When I took the bobbin holder out, there was a gouge in it where the needle had struck it, plus another spot that was roughed up. My husband took it and smoothed them out as best he could, but when I tried to sew again the bobbin holder bounced like crazy. I wanted to cry.

The next day I called the shop where I bought it, only to be told they weren't servicing machines for a couple of weeks. Ugh, that's not what I wanted to hear! Thankfully, I still have my old Kenmore machine, so we pulled that out and cleaned it up to use while I wait. My Sew Steady extension table was brought out of retirement, too.

The Kenmore works fine, but I sure do miss the Janome's throat space! I also miss the stop/start button. My ankle and calf get sore when I sew with the foot pedal for any length of time, so I've been using the button on the Janome for a couple of years. I even use it when free motion quilting, so I never use the foot pedal anymore. Adjusting to using the pedal again took a bit of time, and I keep trying to push a button to stop, except there's no button to push!

Despite the machine woes, the swirl hook quilting was fun to do and looks just the same as it would if it was all done on the Janome. I did have to concentrate so I wouldn't quilt smaller and smaller and smaller as I went, though, because of the smaller throat space. But this is a great reminder that you don't need an expensive machine to do pretty free motion quilting. And just look at that texture!

I love quilting a motif in different sizes on the same quilt. Some of the swirl hooks are big, others are small, and I love the extra interest the variation adds. Plus I don't have to worry about keeping them consistent if I'm varying them on purpose.

I used Aurifil 2540 (medium lavender) for the quilting. The lovely lavender shade mostly blends in, except on the white and the backing.

I cut up what was left of four of the fat quarters for the binding. I may have been a little overzealous when I pieced the binding. No worries, all this extra just went into the binding scraps box, which was getting a little low anyway 😄

Get the Formal Garden pattern in my shop to make your own baby quilt, or throw, or queen size quilt.

One side benefit of the renovations Paul did in our dining room this summer? I now have a pretty spot for indoor quilt pictures! Good thing, too, because the weather hasn't been great for quilt photography since I finished this one. I may have done a little happy dance when I saw how well this picture turned out.

Lots of quilting friends are playing with the Morris Mist fabrics, so be sure to hop around and take a peek at them all.

December 1 - Sherry @ Powered By Quilting

December 1 - Leanne @ Devoted Quilter (you are here!)

December 2 - Brianna @ Sew Cute and Quirky

December 3 - Jen @ Dizzy Quilter

December 4 - Kate @ Katie Mae Quilts

December 5 - Sally and Sally @ Sallys' Sewing Circle

December 6 - Tammy @ Tamarinis

December 7 - Kathryn @ Dragonfly's Quilting Design Studio

December 8 - Anja @ Anja Quilts

December 8 - Sherry @ Powered By Quilting