Mini Quilt

Star patterns in my Shop

I will start with a little background story to this quilt. A few years ago while I was volunteering at a shelter, Mr. Montague Wilberforce joined our little band. At the time he was a sick, stressed-out, untrusting, biting middle-aged man. However, over months of care and a lot of patience, he became a healthy, relaxed and loving gentleman who now purrs all the time. He also likes nothing better than to spend a lot of his day with me.

Except, there is the little factor of a gigantic Maine Coon boy named Mr. Tuffleberry who has been spending his days with me while I work since he was a tiny little kitten. He does not like to share his bed. So Mr. Montague comes by now and then in between his romps around the house to cuddle and sleep on my lap for a while. Since he loves to be very close to his humans without being on the lap the whole time, he spends the rest of the day with my husband in the next room while he works.

I really love quilting for my kitties. I made the 2014 Pantone Challenge quilt for Mr. Tuffleberry while he was recovering from a surgery. Now it was time to make a personal quilt for Mr. Montague as well.

My knitting stars quilt patterns – Aran, Argyle, Vale and Fair Isle

Star patterns in my Shop

I had made these vintage-themed star quilt blocks last year. Having read up on the history of British knitting, I based these patterns on traditional knitting designs. I made the Argyle and Vale stars first from a set of Grandma’s House fat quarters, and then a mistake led me to making the Fair Isle Star and the Aran Star with different background colours. I found a perfect Fleur-de-lis grey-cream fabric for the sashing, and I used it for the backing too. Originally I wanted to hand quilt this, but I am a very slow hand quilter and it would have taken forever. At the end I decided to machine quilt it with a crisscross diagonal quilting pattern using a green variegated thread and bound the quilt with Kona Chocolate.

Now my beautiful blue-eyed boy Monty has a quilt made specially for him that he lounges on and I can chalk up another finish.

-Soma

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Spring Kites Quilt Pattern

Purchase Spring Kites Pattern

The bright colours and carefree nature of kites make me happy. If you could hold on to the tail of a kite and it carried you away, you would never know where you would end up landing. If you had two kites, you could bring your best friend along too! So I designed the Spring Kites quilt to reflect my day dreams of magical kites carrying us away to a distant fairytale adventure on a perfect Spring day.

Spring Kites Quilt Pattern

Once I started thinking about quilting, I could not put aside the idea of hand quilting the puffy clouds. I had never hand quilted before, so I watched a small Craftsy video, ordered my tools, and got started. On the first day I did about 2 inches of quilting in 2 hours, but I was hooked! The next day my flu got worse enough that I had to stay put. So I sat on the sofa and quilted the day away. It was very relaxing!! My stitches are not the smallest, but I think I achieved consistent stitch length – most of the time.

Spring Kites Quilt Pattern

Purchase Spring Kites Pattern

I really wanted to hand quilt the border, but I figured machine quilting that part would cause the hand quilting on the block to stand out more. Then I wrapped the whole mini up with a brown binding which anchors the quilt nicely without weighing it down. I now really love hand quilting and I love this little Spring quilt.

The 12″ Spring Kites quilt pattern is available in my shop. It’s an easy, fun and quick block to make. Although it’s a perfect Spring quilt pattern, I can see endless possibilities of playing with colours. I also included the kite tails embroidery template on the last page of the pattern file.

Happy Sewing,
-Soma

Behind Blue Eyes

Spring Kites – Quilt Pattern