Austin House Mini Quilts

All of us Down Under are lucky enough to have Carolyn Friedlander visiting Australia at the moment. I have been known to use her fabrics just a tad:

She is one of my favourite fabric designers and I was so happy to snag a spot at one of her workshops a couple of weekends ago.

Carolyn lead us through her Austin House Quilt pattern, which is a very achievable foundation paper pieced pattern.

When I first saw the quilt my eye probably twitched. All those little pieces. FPP. Arrgh!

Carolyn guided the class through the FPP process and it was nowhere near as hard as I was expecting. By the second house I was actually enjoying myself, dang nabbit!

I decided to turn my two houses into mini quilts (for my future mini quilt wall – you know, the one I’ll have when I finally get my own sewing room).

If you’d like to do the same as I’ve done here:

add 1-1/4″ background strips to the top and sides of your house block.

add a 4-1/2″ strip of ground to the bottom of the block.

bind with 2-1/4″ binding strips.

I spray basted these (so easy!) and gave them a quick iron to set the spray. The quilting is straight and dense – it adds some lovely texture to the pieces. I used a hera marker to mark 6-8 lines across the mini quilt and then used my walking foot to line up against them.

I backed my minis with more of Carolyn’s Carkai fabric and enjoyed hand stitching my binding while watching a cinematic, thought-provoking movie Transformers Prime (the 5 yr old got to the remote before me, sigh).

I had a wonderful time at Carolyn’s class and would thoroughly recommend you attend one if you have the chance!

Speaking of Carolyn Friedlander – her new, 6 piece, linen/cotton fabric line called Euclid is gorgeous. My next pattern (sneak peek below) will feature a sample made from Euclid and Essex linen….a winning combo!

The pattern is called Deco Diamonds and I’m working hard to have it out before Christmas. Wish me luck! – and don’t forget to subscribe to be the first to know about it.