Saturday 10 March 2012

Kathy Wagner workshop

I had the wonderful privilege of taking a workshop on Miniature Quilts taught by Kathy Wagner yesterday. What fun we had. I'm looking at garbage in a whole new way. I actually saved the trimmings from my tiny half square triangles and am looking for a glass jar to store them in. Wow, are we crazy or what eh? I will say with McDonald's "I'm lovin it" LOL.

Kathy had suggested bringing along scraps leftover from another quilt. What a great idea. I will be storing some of my leftovers in ziplock baggies. Maybe I'll find a pretty basket to store them and keep it beside my sewing machine for instant mini gratification when I need something fun and small to work on.

I actually took Kathy's class about 7 years ago when I lived in Hamilton for a couple of years when DH went back to school to get his B Ed. degree. These are the four quilts that I made after that workshop:




This one was done with strip pieced paper piecing:


This is the same block, but arranged differently:

Here is Kathy starting us out with instructions and hints on sewing with these tiny pieces, thread to use, needles that work, etc. We also got a thick stack of pages of web sites, patterns and ideas to take home. My head was spinning with new ideas. I love making mini quilts and this is only going to make it worse :-).


I decided to challenge my self and make 6 mini tulip blocks consisting of 16 tiny little 1/4" finished squares, some of which are half square triangles!! They were made with 1 1/4" squares and then trimmed down to 3/4"..wow, those were tiny! And, that produced the trimmings which are going into the above mentioned jar :-). Here are my pieces all marked and lined up to start sewing:

You can hardly pick up these pieces!! Tweezers may have come in handy:

The first half square triangle:

Voila...by the end of the day I got three little blocks done, the pieces cut and all the half square triangles made to piece the last three:

And, I thought my 2" one block wonder hexagons were small to work with!!!

One of my quilt students dropped by this morning and I showed her the three little tulip blocks on my wall I made yesterday. Her response: "Why?" Now, that's a really good question Danielle, and it kept me pondering all morning while I was doing my housework. Why do we do these crazy things? I can think of a few reasons:

#1 It's good to challenge ourselves to think (and do) outside the box.
#2 It keeps me off the streets and out of mischief :-)
#3 Kathy dared us!
#4 It's just plain fun to see if something can actually be done.
#5 The actual little quilt (when I get it finished) will look very cute somewhere in my sewing room.
#6 .......I'm sure there are more reasons.......

9 comments:

The Cozy Quilter said...

What a fun day we had! Your tulips look great. We will have to walk around at show and tell to let everyone see our little projects!

Robin Quilts, etc. said...

I'm never made a miniature quilt but it sure looks like fun. I just may have to give it a go. Thanks for sharing.

Quilter Kathy said...

How fun to read your post today Jacqui! You were very brave to tackle the tiniest size! Why?!? Because it's fun!

Mary-Kay said...

They would also make a really cute pin cushion.

Here's 2 Ewe said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Here's 2 Ewe said...

Well! All I can say is that I would much rather wind a 5 yard warp, thread my loom at 20 threads per inch and weave some tea towels! But my hat goes off to you crazy quilters non-the-less!

Cheryl's Teapots2Quilting said...

Wow! And I thought 1.5" finished 9 patches were small. Great job, cute quilts and blocks.

Idle hands, empty brain ... said...

I agree with Quilter Kathy - we do it because we can/because it's there! Congrats the Tulips look great!

Heather said...

Love that very first quiltlet you showed.