EQ 25 | Lori Miller Designs

The Electric Quilt Company is celebrating its 25th Anniversary in business this year and is hosting monthly contests. They joined with sponsor Moda for the March challenge. You needed to make a mini quilt with Moda Fabrics. Luckily, I had a Mini Swoon Quilt Kit by Thimble Blossoms that I had picked up when I was at the AQS Grand Rapids show last year. I hadn’t had a chance to make it yet, so this was the perfect opportunity to stitch it up.

The kit had really pretty fabrics by V and Co. Color Me Happy. They have some smaller prints that work well for this mini.

This pattern has a lot of intricate pieces and I think it almost takes as long as piecing a larger quilt. I tried very hard to get all of the pieces to align and match carefully. There are a few artistic licenses but overall, I was pretty pleased with my effort.

I decided to quilt a feathered medallion motif inside each of the blocks. I had a feathered wreath stencil shape that was just the right size and I marked it with washout markers.

I was looking for designs and saw the feathered medallion in Natalia Bonner’s latest book, Next Steps in Machine Quilting. So all I had to add was a crosshatch section in the center of the wreath to add some pizzazz.

I added a little flower in each of the cornerstones and free motion quilted rolling parallel lines in the rest of the sashing.

Here is a closer look at the crosshatching. The wreath template was for traditional quilting, but I just used it as a guideline for continuous line free motion quilting. The small size made the free motion quilting so much easier. All that quilting really added some interesting texture.

I didn’t win the challenge for the month, but I certainly stitched up a treasure. I need to get all of these mini’s up on the wall in my studio so I can admire them!

If you had not heard, The Electric Quilt Company is celebrating their 25th Anniversary this year. They are having contests and giveaways all year long. For January, they issued a challenge to create a mini quilt with Michael Miller Fabrics. I happened to have a Charm pack of 5″ squares of Michael Miller Modern Basics. I grabbed some white polkadot fabric at my local quilt shop and started planning. I decided I wanted to try a New York Beauty block because I had never made one of those and this fun little quilt is the result.

I started this adventure by going to my Electric Quilt 7 software and searching for New York Beauty quilt block. I found a fancier block which I edited to simplify it a bit. Then I sized the block down to a 4 1/2″ finished block so I could use my 5″ square charm pack. My EQ7 software made it so easy to size it perfectly and I could print out template pieces and the paper piecing foundation pattern as well.

Here are 3 charms I started with.

I used the templates to cut out the pieces and as a guide to overcut the paper pieced components.

Here are all the pieces after I have finished the paperpieced center and getting ready to tackle those little curves. I just pinned the middle and sewed out from the center a few stitches at a time. I stopped to adjust about every 3 – 4 stitches.

Here is the little block all together before I trimmed.

I made a total of nine blocks. They were really pretty fun and one you got going they went pretty fast. I really like this pattern.

Last step, I used free motion quilting to add some contrast to the squares. I just love the little zig zag in the center white curved piece.

My little cutie did not win any prizes, but I did learn alot about editing a quilt block in Electric Quilt 7 and how to sew curved seams. I think that is the best happy circumstance from participating in a quilt challenge, you get to learn something new!