Q for Quilt

For my first 1:12 scale quilt, I decided on an Amish-style one instead of the jewel-box, as the pieces are bigger (!) and thus I felt on more solid ground.  I'm drawn to Amish quilts anyway, the richness of colors and the simplicity -- they have a kind of peacefulness to them.  There are a lot of patterns I like but I chose Diamond in a Square, for its relative simplicity yet with the subtle liveliness of the diamond's angles.  Interestingly, the Diamond in a Square pattern (sometimes called Center Diamond) originated in the 1930s, among the Lancaster County Amish.  It seems so timeless that I assumed it had been around forever.  There are some variations that can be made -- the corner squares on the narrow borders can be omitted, one or both, or the narrow border around the center diamond -- but of course the basic elements are the same.

I found an image on Pinterest which I then couldn't track down --

which seemed to me quite unusual with the tan/beige, but was very appealing, so I started with that and just played around with different colors in Kona Cotton, which I really like for its quality and the richness and wide variety of its colors.  I ended up getting these --

which are from the bottom, Parchment, Laurel, Hibiscus, Teal Blue, and Garnet.

For the assembly I was going to just wing it (she said blithely), but when I was looking around for old quilts for color ideas, I also came across the Diamond in a Square mini-quilt tutorial at Purl Soho, which turned out to be a very helpful starting point.  Not having much quilting experience myself, it was a bit of a revelation that I didn't need to cut all of the pieces beforehand, which turned out to make it much easier and less stressful to adjust the next piece here or there if it needed it.

I decided to press all of the seams open, figuring that that would distribute the thickness more evenly, which I suspect at this small scale might be obvious.  I didn't use any batting at all, thinking it might make the quilt too stiff to drape properly -- I've heard that some miniaturists use fabric cut from an old T-shirt, though, so I'll keep that in mind.  The binding is just folded over from the back and stitched down by hand on the front, mitering the corners.

Yes, the last corner is really wobbly!  I didn't notice until after I'd finished -- so that's the end that gets tucked in!

I was really grateful for both the quality of the Kona Cotton, which took a bit of a beating getting sewn and resewn more than a couple of times on some of the pieces but still looks great, and also for the Purl Soho tutorial and the advice I read somewhere (last summer when I was making the sling bag) that people will never know how long it took you to sew something but they will see how much care you took sewing it, which on occasion must be translated as "yes, pick out the wonky seams, you will be glad you did," which is entirely correct, for just look at the results --

Any quilter reading this will no doubt notice that I haven't actually quilted this yet, and I think I will leave that for the time being.  Obviously it won't get much wear-and-tear in the dollhouse, so there shouldn't be a problem with things shifting around, or the seam allowances bunching up.  My hand-stitching is still a bit rough, so I think it prudent to wait until I've had a bit more experience in keeping the stitches both small and even!

Well, after this success, of course I had to hurry up and make the rest of the bedlinens, so I stitched up a set of sheets ...

... four pillows, and cases.  The pillows themselves are sewn from plain bleached muslin stuffed with one fluffed-up cotton ball each, and the sheets and cases are from a partly-worn-out sheet, the rest of which has that lovely old-sheet softness.  The fabric proved to be awfully ravelly, but the cases do look good.

Next time I will try and get the scale a bit better -- this house isn't particularly "realistic" as dollhouses go, but I'd like to have things not too "dolly" here -- but really I'm quite pleased with the quilt, and very happy with the colors and the way they play together.  Plus "quilt" starts with Q, so there's my ABChallenge!

Comments

[Sarina]

Wow, it looks really good, Jeanne! Those points! The colors are very pretty together.

[Toffeeapple]

That is lovely, well done! Is it hand-stiched throughout?
I like a bit of wonkiness, lets you know that it was made by a real person.

[Susan D]

For batting in my mini quilts, I find a piece of old flannellette is just right. Taken from an old sheet, for example.I

Very nice work.

[Jeanne]

For future reference, Susan adds that she presses seams to one side (which helps to give the illusion of "fluffiness"), and always uses flannelette as batting -- and that she never actually quilts them, as it don't seem to look right. The ones I've seen of Susan's are log-cabin variations, which consist of fairly narrow strips in the blocks, so I could see how quilting would look odd, with the quilting so close to the seams -- these Amish-style ones, though, with the larger pieces of fabric ... I'm still wondering.