amy’s creative side | Night Quilter

When I realized that my Unlocked quilt qualified for the Large Quilts Category in this year’s Blogger’s Quilt Festival hosted by Amy’s Creative Side, I knew that I also wanted to enter one of the smallest quilts I’ve made to date: the teeny tiny modern hexies mini mini quilt I made for Jennifer at Little Black Cat Quilting as part of the #miniminiquiltswap. You can see my progress post on this mini mini here, and the finish post here. I am entering this mini mini quilt into the ROYGBIV Category, since I cannot let a year go by without a rainbow entry!

This mini mini quilt makes me giggle. The English paper pieced hexies are 1/4″ each, and were hot-iron-basted in lieu of thread or glue due to their size. I then carefully removed the cardstock templates and followed this awesome tutorial by Nicole at Modern Handcraft to attach the hexies to the mini mini quilt, which finishes at 4 1/2″ square (18″ around–it would easily fit into the mini quilts category, too!).

I love how teeny tiny the hexagons are, and how well the diagonal quilting worked despite slight wonkiness due to their teeny size. I quilted with 50wt Aurifil thread in 2600-Dove, using the walking foot on my Bernina 560.

A single-fold binding with my favorite neutral from Carolyn Friedlander’s Botanics line finished this quilt in a subtle way, letting the rainbow hexagons be the stars. I really love this mini mini quilt and had such a fun time shrinking the pattern as much as my adult fingers could manage.

The toothpick for scale in this process photo helps you see exactly how tiny these hexagons are!

Just one more peek with a US quarter after quilting. Such cute little hexies!

This is my first year entering the Festival, but my Unlocked quilt is entered into the Large Quilts Category (even though it’s also rainbow!), and you can see my spring entry here:

Spring 2015: Prismatic Medallion Quilt

I invite you to take a minute to browse the gorgeous quilts that have been entered into this online festival, and/or enter a quilt of your own! Here links to all of the categories included in the Festival to make browsing easy: Mini, Small, Large, Appliqué, Art, Hand Quilted, Home Machine Quilted, Modern, Original Design, ROYGBIV, Scrappy, Viewer’s Choice (If you feel so moved, you can nominate Mini Mini Modern Hexies in the Viewer’s Choice category, too!)

Here is the schedule for those of you who want to follow along, view the quilts, and vote for your favorites:

October 23-29, 2015 – Linky’s Open & Nominate for Viewer’s Choice
October 29-Novebmer 5, 2015 – Vote for favorites in each of the categories
November 6, 2015 – Winners announced

As we all recover from the onslaught of quilt market overload, either for those of you who are/were there in person, or those of us scrolling through endless Instagram eye candy and Periscope broadcast pop ups (or just for fun, for those of you who manage to avoid all talk of International Quilt Market), it’s time for the fun virtual quilt show hosted annually by Amy’s Creative Side: Bloggers Quilt Festival.
This year, I’m entering my quilt Unlocked into the Large Quilt Category. It is also an original design, but I figured I’d go by the old adage “go big or go home”. Plus, I find it somewhat comical that I will be entering the festival with a large quilt (250″ around) and a 4″ square mini mini. The draw of that dichotomy may have played a large role in my category-decision making process.

As regular readers may remember, Unlocked is my quilt magazine publication debut pattern, available in the September issue of Make Modern magazine, and will be available for individual sale in my Craftsy shop in early November.

It is a quick and easy quilt featuring a column of rainbow keys and lots of yummy negative space. It measures 53″x72″, resulting in a 250″ perimeter and qualifying it for the Large Quilt Category.

Unlocked was longarm quilted by my friend Stephanie at Late Night Quilter, and boy did she take full of advantage of that negative space! She used the Cityscape Path straight line quilting style designed by Krista Withers and photos don’t even come close to doing it justice.

This is my first year entering the Festival, but you can see my spring entry here:

Spring 2015: Prismatic Medallion Quilt

I also plan to enter my teeny tiny Modern Hexies mini mini quilt in the ROYGBIV category. (stay tuned for that post!)

Here are links to all of the categories included in the Festival: Mini, Small, Large, Appliqué, Art, Hand Quilted, Home Machine Quilted, Modern, Original Design, ROYGBIV, Scrappy, Viewer’s Choice (If you feel so moved, you can nominate Unlocked in the Viewer’s Choice category, too!)