May Cubicle Quilt {Finished Mini}

I may have forgotten to take work-in-progress pictures of this project, but I did finish my May cubicle quilt!

Like my April cubicle quilt, I had made the scrappy background long ago. Some of the fabrics that I used for the background were leftovers from my Cartwheel baby quilt and my Madison baby quilt. I used red, yellow, and green scraps for the flower and petals. I used orange and olive Aurifil (not sure of the exact colors!) for the machine quilting on the flower.

For the quilting, I used the same leafy meander inspired by Angela Walters that I used on my Antietam-inspired baby quilt. I absolutely love the texture on this mini and it was the perfect quilting choice.

The backing and binding are also leftovers from the Madison quilt.

This little quilty cutie is all ready to be hung up on May 1st! I actually have never made the larger June quilt to match my wall hangings at home so I might need to make both the June cubicle quilt and the June wall hanging at the same time.

Sharing at Finish it up Friday!

April Cubicle Quilt {Finished Mini}

My coworkers have enjoyed seeing my cubicle-sized mini quilts that match my larger monthly wall hangings that hang at home. I made ones for January, February, and March before getting distracted by plenty of other projects.

To make the April cubicle mini to match the April wall hanging at home, I decided that my cubicle mini would just have a scaled down umbrella (thank you, Google Images clip art machine). I had made the pieced background for this over a year ago in shades of green. I picked a larger floral print for the umbrella and brown for the handle.

For the satin stitching, I used brown on the handle and pink around the umbrella. For the quilting, I used a green and yellow variegated thread in rows of loops.

The backing is an old yellow and green stripe from my stash and the binding is a yellow, green, and pink leafy print left over from some older baby quilts that I made (in approximately 2013!).

This will be going up in my cubicle on April 1st! Now I have over a month to try to get one done for May.

Sharing at Finish it up Friday and Oh Scrap!

Finished March Wallhangings

Yay for more finishes!

This last week has been kind of busy with work (both jobs!), but I still managed to finish my "regular size" March wall hanging for at home and my "mini" wall hanging for at work.

I posted on Instagram when I got  all of the satin stitching done on last Thursday (snow day!) and then did the quilting and binding on Sunday. This was the first time that I used a single color for all of my satin stitching for one of these wall hangings and I am very happy with how it turned out. It definitely helps the birds, tree, and flowers jump out from the busy background. I did vary the width of the satin stitching in a few places because of how small some of the pieces were.

Here's a close up of the birdhouse and I think this picture shows both the different widths of the satin stitching that I did and shows off the quilting. For the quilting I did an all-over pattern that started with a swirl and then I did two layers of flower petals around each swirl. I think it turned out very well and it wasn't too dense or too open.

I think the little red birds might need some button eyes.

Here's a close up of another one of the flowers and more of the quilting showing up well. I used a purple and yellow on creamy-white floral print for the binding to try to bring out some of the non-green/teal colors in the wall hanging. I used this old spool of purple variegated thread (unfortunately you can't really tell it is variegated in these pictures!) to do the top stitching on the front of the wall hanging using this herringbone-type decorative stitch.

On the back I used the same green fabric for the back and the pockets. The fabric is one that I've had in my stash for a long while that I bought when Park Ranger Husband and I were visiting Ohio and I bought the end of this bolt. It's a very cute fabric but for a quilt shop fabric it's kind of on the flimsy side, hence why it's on the back of a wall hanging.

Here's a shot of the quilting on the back and a closer up view of the backing fabric.

And now onto my March mini! Forgive the semi-atrocious fluorescent lighting, I have no windows.

I used all teal pieces for the backing on this one with lights in the middle and darker pieces around the outside (like basically all of these!) and I just put a bird and a birdhouse on it. I thought about doing a flower too, but I was worried it would look too busy.

For the quilting, I used the "gridlines" created by the squares to use as a guide to do a simple clamshell quilting motif. If you look closely, you can see that the "dips" of one row line up with the seams, and the "dips" of the next row line up with the center of the block -- at least for the most part. it was a little harder to stay consistent in the middle where the birdhouse was, but I did my best to keep things evenly spaced and of the same approximate height. All in all -- a good new motif added to my arsenal. Not something I would do on something very large, but a fun accent motif, I think.

Here's the back -- yes, I do hang it up with a pencil.

This squiggly fabric is left over from my Beau's Ties quilt and I have a LOT Of it left over, so I'm probably going to be using it for a lot of wall hanging backings in the near future. I also bound this one with the same fabric -- the squiggle looks so good as a binding!

I'm linking up at the usual places -- free motion mavericks and finish it up friday!

Little Finish -- Happy Hearts Mini

I finished another little mini monthly wall hanging for my office! And I got it done just in time to hang it up for February!

Like its "mama bear" wall hanging that will get hung up at our apartment this weekend, this one has hot pink outer blocks and light pink inner blocks.

Instead of doing one large patchy heart, I decided to do three smaller hearts in red.

For the quilting, I did FMQ with simple diagonally directed loop-de-loops.

This one also has a mini-sleeve for hanging. I use an unsharpened pencil to hang it (and it's snowman friend) on two push pins on my bulletin board.

Its 9.5" by 12.5" finished!

For those of you interested in the Quilter's Choice Quilt Along for this year -- the information is available on the "QCQAL -- Row Quilt Edition" Tab or you can pop over to Craftsy and download the info sheet for free! It includes directions on how to pre-cut your sashing strips from yardage so you won't have to piece them!

A Tiny Snowman and a Curious Bunny

It seems like my scraps are multiplying faster than I can tame them so I decided that in addition to making my calendar wall hangings for in my dining room, I wanted to make tiny versions for my desk at work.

Unsurprisingly, this came together ridiculously quickly and I don't have any in progress pictures. Oops.

The background squares are 2 inches unfinished and the finished size is 9 1/2 by 12 1/2 inches!

The slightly frustrating thing was that it is ever, ever so slightly too big to bind with one width-of-fabric strip! I had to add about 4 inches to get it all the way around the little man.

In the meantime, I've started a tiny February wall hanging and am continuing to work on some more tiny houses (which you might be able to spot in the below pictures). I have been making an utter mess of the dining room and Clara the Bunny has decided that she must inspect everything.

For the first time she got brave and tried to run off with a charm square and in the process nibbled the corner off of it. Cotton is a natural fiber, right?

Linking up at Fabric Tuesday and Linky Tuesday!