It’s so much fun when a blogging buddy releases a book!

Alyce from Blossom Heart Quilts, a fellow Aussie quilt blogger, released her first book at the end of 2019. It’s called Mini Masterpieces, and as the name suggests it has a lovely array of mini quilt patterns for you to sew.

The projects start with simple blocks and progress to more complicated blocks. Each project teaches you about the base block before introducing you to the mini quilt that can be made from it. It’s a lot of fun, with a lot of variety to choose from, and very educational to boot!

Where to buy Mini Masterpieces

If you’re in Australia/NZ you can buy the book directly from Alyce here. (Recommended given how slow international post is at the moment.)

If you’re elsewhere in the world, you can find the book here on Amazon*.

When I joined Alyce’s book tour she allocated me the flying geese block. I did a post on the block in 2019 and you can see that over here.

Today I’m showing you the mini quilt pattern from the book made with the flying geese block. You can see the flying geese mini quilt in the photo above – it’s the rainbow one in the bottom left corner.

Whenever I’m asked to make something from a book for a book tour I take it as a personal challenge to make something as different as possible from the example in the book. (But still using the pattern, obviously!) I figure it’s as good as showing you how to make a different quilt from the same pattern – and everyone loves a twofer, right? Right!

My fabric choices

I decided I wanted to create a very low volume background from most of the flying geese and add a couple of colourful, statement blocks.

This entire mini is made with Alison Glass fabrics. The background is a grey and white low volume, with solid white geese.

You’ll notice that my background geese don’t always follow the small-medium-large order that Alyce has in the book. I’d like to say that was a design choice, but it was actually because I messed up the order. I chain pieced about 5 blocks and then realised my error, so I made the decision to let it be. To be honest, I quite like it like this! (I made the same number and sizes of flying geese as per the pattern, it’s just my order of sewing them together that was rogue.)

The colourful blocks were a proper design choice. I pivoted two of the flying geese trios to face each other and create that middle diamond shape.

Quilting the Flying Geese Mini Quilt

I mused over this for a while. I originally wanted to try some hand quilting but I didn’t have any suitable blue/green perle cotton on hand.

What I did have, however, was a nice little collection of almost-spent blues and greens in my machine threads. This mini quilt was the perfect opportunity to clear out some of these not-enough-for-a-big-project spools.

Because I had so little of the lime and green threads left, I used my standard light grey thread in the bobbin. I then used the lime/green bobbin remnants for top thread as well as the spools.

I love a meandering, wavy quilting session. It’s very therapeutic creating the wavy lines and it’s virtually impossible to get it wrong.

Here’s a short video of my wavy quilting technique:

(If you pay attention you’ll see I messed up a little and lost grip on the quilt for a bit. This method is so forgiving that you can’t even notice on the quilt. I love wavy lines!)

I used all my colourful threads over the colourful flying geese portion.

For the areas of low volume flying geese I used light grey thread – visible but subdued, like the background.

I really like the effect and think it turned out rather nice.

My backing was a yard of Kona in Peacock that I found in my stash (purchased from Pink Chalk Fabrics, back in the day).

Binding the Flying Geese Mini Quilt

For binding I chose another Alison Glass fabric in a vibrant cobalt blue.

I wanted to be sure to get a cross section of all the colours in the fabric around the quilt binding. If I had cut my binding strips from selvedge to selvedge (cross grain), they would only contain a single emblem colour. Instead I cut the strips on the lengthwise grain so the strips contained some of each colour in the pattern motif.

I included a little snippet of the lime green flying geese fabric in the binding as well.

I sewed this binding on using my zigzag binding technique. It’s a quick, easy and very secure binding technique.

And here’s the completed mini quilt. A very modern flying geese quilt pattern. It’s quite a big ‘un, finishing at 30″ square. This could easily turn into a baby quilt with another couple of rows of flying geese or a border.

I hope you enjoyed seeing what I made with Alyce’s new book.

If you’d like to sew some minis yourself, be sure to grab a copy of the book either in Alyce’s shop or on Amazon*.

Happy sewing!

*Amazon affiliate link – thank you if you purchase through this link. It helps offset my hosting costs.

I have a Zed quilt to show you today – this one is twin size.

My Zed quilt pattern was published in 2018 and includes instructions to make a throw size quilt. You can find a blog post on that rainbow coloured first quilt here.

The pattern has now been amended to include the twin size instructions as well, yay! Two for one.

Zed is a fat quarter friendly pattern and is a great introduction to making half rectangle triangle blocks. The HRTs are 2:1 size ratio and easy to trim either with a Bloc_loc HRT ruler or with a standard ruler (instructions are given for this).

The twin size can be made with half yards if you are careful. A half yard will make one colour row, as long as you don’t make any cutting mistakes.

When I write my patterns I always make sure to bump up the fabric requirements to include the ability to cut an extra of the widest strip required. This is so if you make a cutting mistake you’ll have enough fabric to cut that one strip again. (If you mis-cut 2 strips, you’re on your own 😂)

I don’t know about you, but when I’ve had 3 glasses of wine and decide to start a new project, I’m always grateful there’s a little fat built into the fabric requirements. (Are you the same, or does it annoy you? I hope you can see that it comes from a place of love!)

This is why you’ll see the fabric requirements show 5/8 yd for the single color row of the twin size quilt – just in case you need that little bit extra. But if you’ve only got half yards in stash, know that you can make 9 different colour rows from 9 half yards in a pinch.

For my twin size version I used a sunset colour palette with white-on-white background fabric. It’s a bit hard to see here but I used a mix of several different low volume Carolyn Friedlander fabrics that I’ve had in stash for a while. You can find similar fabrics on Etsy here* and here*. They give interesting texture to the background, but because they’re white on white they don’t detract from the colourful piecing.

I sent this quilt out to be longarm quilted as I just wasn’t up to the job. Above you can see the large scale looping script-like pattern I chose. I thought it was a nice counterpoint to all the angles.

The backing was a Carolyn Friedlander wide back fabric* in the perfect purple. I used the coordinating Kona solid (in Geranium*) for the binding.

There was good long strip of the wide back fabric left over after quilting so I used it to put together a complementary cushion.

I used my Scrap Magnet pattern for the cushion front. (The pattern includes instructions for a stand alone block, perfect for cushions, as well as the throw quilt pattern).

I chose a cheery centre square of the yellow fabric from the quilt.

Quilting was a simple cross hatch design through the diagonals (no need for marking lines of any sort).

I made a plain fabric (unquilted) cushion back from the wide back fabric and used a black zipper. I love how easy envelope cushion backings are, but I always feel they are a little insecure. Putting in zippers isn’t my favourite, but I think it’s worth the time.

The twin size Zed quilt and matching Scrap Magnet cushion are now in their new forever home, on the bed of my lovely niece.

You can find the Zed quilt pattern (throw and twin size) and the Scrap Magnet pattern (quilt and single block) in my little shop. Happy sewing!

Kirsty x

*affiliate links – thank you for your support of Bonjour Quilts!

I made a scrappy mini quilt from my Scrappy Posie quilt pattern.

You can see the larger baby mat I previously made and download the free pattern for it over here.

The original baby mat version finishes at 42″ square. This smaller, scrappy mini quilt version comes in at 21″ square. It’s perfect for a table topper or to make an oversized cushion cover.

And of course, it’s a great way to use up some scraps!

I quilted my Scrappy Posie with wavy, diagonal lines. There was no need to draw any lines – the corners of the squares are more than enough guidance.

These organic waves are very easy to sew and quite therapeutic to complete.

I had planned to put together a scrappy binding but found I had quite a long length of one of the fuschia fabrics.

Those are special binding clips shown above. I’m often asked if they’re hair clips, but they’re not – they are stiffer and stronger. They also hurt when you use them in your hair (as my daughter found out the hard way when she was little!) You can find these binding clips here on Amazon. *

This mini quilt is currently doing duty as a table topper on our deck, but it’ll move inside soon. I’d like to put him on the wall next to some of my little Fleur mini quilts (one shown below). They’ll look very cute together.

If you have a surplus of scraps, perhaps you’d like to sew a scrappy mini quilt of your own.

Happy sewing!

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