This Debbie Caffrey pattern was worked as a Mystery Quilt workshop run by the Guild and led by Kathleen O’Malley. When I picked my fabrics I chose colours from the same line (Simpatico by Maywood Studio) so the colour contrasts worked well. The neutral shade was from the Dear Stella collection (Dots). The cutting took a long time, as did several of the steps involved in making the blocks. After the first block was finished it was a rather boring because there were no surprises. I omitted a couple of the borders in order to end up with the correct size for the dining room table. I fully intended to free-motion quilt this but chickened out at the last minute. I opted for some stitch-in-the-ditch and straight lines. I like the way it looks, but it resulted in so many ends that needed to be knotted and buried. Lesson learned!

I purchased fabric on sale to use for the backing; it will look good if I need to turn the tablecloth over to prevent fading from the sun. I think the backing gives it a very “fall” feeling, but Pat thinks it could work as a Christmas cloth.

This is one (of six) of my 2015/2016 Guild UFO Challenges. Until I present it to the Guild and have it checked off my list I’ll hang it over the railing to keep it safe from spills .

After the 2015 Guild Quilt Show we were approached by Family Place to see if we could make a large quilt for the kids to sit on during their story time. One of our Guild members took on the task of coordinating the project; but we were asked to each make a 36″ x 36″ square (quilted and bound). These quilts (or mats) could then be individually chosen by the kids who are in attendance and they would each have their own story-time spot.

I signed up for the task immediately because Family Place is the venue our BOND mums and babies graduate to. I wanted to use some of my novelty fabrics for the quilt I was making, but I didn’t think 36″ was large enough for a good I-Spy quilt. I came up with my own pattern for this.

I re-used half of a set of curtains I made for Dylan’s room as the backing. I think the fabric makes the mat reversible, depending on the mood of the child.

This pattern was introduced at the first Mini Meez meeting; two of the group were making it but I decided to pass and worked on something else. By the second meeting another person had made one and it was introduced as “putting her own spin on the pattern”. I decided it would be a good way to use up some of my pre-cut squares so moved forward with it. I pieced the top at the Mount Washington retreat.

I used one of the templates from the book 501 Quilting Motifs for the larger squares, and stitch-in-the-ditch and cross-hatching for the rest.

I like my miniatures to teach me something, so I used a two colour binding on the project. It was simple to do and I’ll use it again. I often don’t match my quilt top to the backing and then deciding on a binding is an issue. Not with this technique.

I’ll probably offer the quilt for sale at the 2015 craft sale; if it doesn’t sell I’ll likely add it to my doll carriage.

I picked this pattern from one of the magazines available through the Mini Meez group. I love Dresden plates and thought I could English Paper Piece it. As a challenge to myself I had been hand piecing some of my miniature projects; this project would allow me to hand piece and hand quilt.

Things didn’t work out as planned and, when I was done, I was temped to throw the whole thing out the window. But I knew the other Mini Meez were very interested in the pattern as I was stitching , so I started over, this time using my machine.

I made all my fans the same colour. The fans are appliquéd using a blanket stitch; I used a flip and quilt method, with the appliqué stitches serving as the main quilting. A stitch-in-the-ditch cross hatch finished the quilting.

On the way to Little Fans, Let Me Count the Ways was born.

Let me count the ways I messed up:

• I didn’t allow the ¼” seam allowance in my English paper piecing templates so everything was much smaller than it should have been
• I didn’t cut the setting triangles properly and I didn’t recognize the difference between setting triangles and corners
• The hand quilting worked okay (using fine crochet cotton) but I didn’t square the piece first so many of my knots were in the area that would be squared off and the stitches could come out very easily
• The actual squaring up process was dismal as I tried to keep points and half triangles on the edges
• Because the piece wasn’t squared properly the binding isn’t square either
• When it was all done I pressed it and there was something on my iron that transferred to the piece
• When I washed out the spot the iron left, the colours in one of the fans ran even though I had used a colour absorbing sheet