Mixed Fabric Mini Quilt

I was recently inspired by a men's sock ad in a magazine (weird).  I have been milling over making another quilt for some time but that ad just pushed me over the edge.  I made a mini quilt because who am I kidding that queen quilt took over my life and ain't nobody got time for that.

I wanted to use a mix of fabrics to make the quilt look like it was taken or reused from other garments, to give it that quintessential 'heirloom' look and feel.  I incorporated the classic quilting cotton as well as linen and wool in a variety of colors all of which I just happened to have in my fabric storage room (yes, it's a whole room now).  In the photo below I was in the beginning stages of placing the quilt squares and figuring out which ones to put where next & trying super hard to keep Teeny off the table so she didn't mess up my arrangement... challenges!

Some in progress shots of 2 of the squares that made it to the finished quilt.  I made a bunch of squares that didn't fit visually and they got canned (so sad).  Better luck next time squares!

Here's the quilt squares all arranged and ready to be sewn together!  Now that the creative thinking part of the process was over it was time to do some mindless sewing, yay!

Sewing one of the columns together:

Shazam, just like that the whole quilt top was sewn together.  I also cut out the batting and quilt back ready to go for some quilt magic.

A back image of the quilt top of all of the sewing and serging I did for each square, good times.

Then I quilted the 3 layers with vertical lines along the columns in the square seams with invisible thread (it's seriously invisible try threading a machine with it, lol).

Phew, now that the stress of sewing quilting lines was over I sewed the quilt binding to the edges and hand stitched it to the back.  I used a tiny quilt binding because the quilt is so busy it only needed a simple border.

And, done!  Here you can see the front and quilted back of the quilt.

Feast your eyes!  The full finished quilt!!

Here it is on the bed, it just blends right in.  Clearly it was meant to be.

Writing this blog post felt like telling a bedtime story.  Having a children's book explaining how to make a quilt would be awesome, just saying.  I would've loved someone to read that to me at bedtime as a kid, I'd be dreaming about clouds of puffy batting!