August 2024 – Lana Russel

Marvelous Mini Challenge

The August monthly challenge was to make a mini quilt of our choice using any technique, not to exceed 24″ square. We could choose any fabric collection except the Surprise Bundle to be disclosed at a later date.

Island Batik’s Poetic Bouquet by Kathy Engle for The Whimsical Workshop

I had a pattern called Hues of Blue by Sherri McConnell that I had saved from a magazine ages ago.. It finished at 22″ square, so perfect! I couldn’t find the name of the magazine anywhere on my copy. I thought this would be a great time to use it as i could feature every fabric in the Poetic Bouquet collection along with the two coordination fabrics. I used the dark coordinating fabric (Storm) for the center block and the light one (Sky) for the background.

Copy of Hues of Blue by Sherri McConnell from an unknown magazine

Once the piecing was complete, I loaded it on my Handi Quilter Forte longarm. I used Hobbs 80/20 batting with a layer of Hobbs wool batting on top to give more definition to my quilting. I test my tension before quilting by placing a 5″ square of scrap fabric to the side of my quilt and stitch some circles and sharp angles to test for eyelashing indicating uneven tension. The stitches should look the same on the front and back as shown above and below.

I wanted the piecing to be the star and not have the quilting overpower it so I used rulers and echoed the block shapes by stitching 1/4″ away from the edges using my Handi Quilter longarm Ditch Ruler.

Here is a close up.

Here all of the shapes are outlined and I’m ready to quilt the background.

All finished! I used various designs for the background using the Handi Quilter Mini Scallop ruler for the borders and the Multi Clamshell and Ditch Ruler for the rest.