Cupcakes and Tea with Jack – A Mini Quilt

The Jack’s Chain quilt block is one that has always fascinated me. I used it as Block Twelve, Dozens Squared, in my Dreamcatcher Round the Year BOM quilt too. But what intrigued me was the way the whole quilt comes together. I could not see myself making a full quilt but a mini appeared quite doable.

So here is my miniquilt, all of 10″ by 10″!

You have seen those 3/4″ ninepatches, of course, in my previous post.  I do not recommend this quilt in this size, unless you are seriously crazy about miniatures, which is why I did consider calling this quilt The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.

Here are some pictures of the process.

First I machine sewed the nine-patches.  This method had given me two sets of nine-patches in reverse combinations, half with the pink in centre and halfwith the white in the centre. So, I  designed the quilt to make best use of the nine-patches. I also made six lime green and white nine-patches, to add some zing to the pink quilt.

Then I fussy cut 3/4″ triangles, with freezer paper at the back to make pieces for English paper piecing. 24 of them had a green flower in the centre and 18 of them had a white flower in the centre. Again, this was to make best use of my fabric where white flowers alternated with green on a pink background.  I needed 13 hexagons for my original design; these were also fussy cut, with freezer paper.

Now I was ready to put together the blocks. I am not sure I used the most efficient method, but it appeared to be the best when I embarked on it. I tried English paper piecing some of the blocks, but gave up and resorted to machine sewing, appliqueing and even hand sewing!

I began with the centre block.

Once this was done, I expanded on it by adding the surrounding hexagons with their teapots and more nine-patches…

I then made the six blocks that were planned for the edge and started to put everything together…

Ah! Finally done! But wait…

It needed something more! Back to the drawing board …er…Quilt Assistant software on my laptop. More fussy cutting and six more hexagons.  This time the cupcakes. Well, what is a tea-party without cakes, in any case?

I appliqued the whole piece to a white background, and cut away a circle from the background centre. Next, I added two layers of thin polyester batting. cut away a circle from the inner layer so that only the white background had a double layer.

I did think of hand-quilting it, but it was too much of an effort. So stitch in the ditch it was! I started echo quilting it, but soon got bored of that so just finished off with some straight lines. My Husqvarna Viking does not need a change to a walking foot, so the entire quilting was done with the regular B foot!

A picture of the back. The binding was also fussy cut from a fat quarter and done in four pieces; I finished it to give a mitered look on the front.

As usual, I had to do a mathematical check of the number of pieces! That is 548 pieces, excluding the binding and backing.

But all in all, I am quite happy with how this finally turned out. I am in the mood for another crazy mini. What do you suggest? I would like it to finish at the same size. Happy Quilting to you all, while I go and make myself a cup of…coffee. I am not a tea person.

Author: Mads

In alphabetical order: daughter, mother, painter, philosopher, poet, quilter, seeker, wife... View all posts by Mads