Alexander's mini quilt

 Hello everybody!

It was my brother's 40th birthday last month, and I made him this little mini quilt in celebration.

This post is about the construction of the mini quilt, for my quilty friends and readers. For anyone who knows, or would like to know about Alex as a person and the meaning behind all the embroidery symbols can read my previous post here.

The central panel is needleturn appliqué. I chose blue and yellow as they reminded me of the colour scheme my mother used when making quilts for my brother as a child.

needleturn appliqué letter A

I made 40 2-inch square hand embroideries representing things about Alex. 

embroidery in progress

Half are on black and half on white, and I arranged them in a chequerboard effect, as a tribute to his skills at chess (also represented by one of the embroideries). I traced some off computer screens (which is actually quite tricky, and others were copied in a more freehand style, or following online tutorials, with several practice goes on paper first.  I am lacking in confidence with my drawing skills, so I am very happy with what I managed to produce here.

sketches

I used backstitch when stitching black on white. I did this for the first ones that were white on black, but I found the effect was a bit gappy between the stitches. So I changed to doing a split stitch instead, and that looks much better, in my opinion.

Backstitch

split stitch

I pieced it by machine, and quilted it by machine. I used the same yellow as in the centre for the backing. This is actually the largest thing I have ever machine-quilted. I stitched in the ditch for the squares, and went around the edge of the letters in the middle. Going around the edges of the letters discretely, rather than doing a continuous quilting pattern did lead to a lot of annoying loose ends to bury for such a small piece, but I am very happy with the effect.

Quilting around the letters

the back of the quilt

I bound it with the same blue I had used for the letters.

making the binding

I signed it on the back, and added some hanging tabs so he can put it on his wall if he chooses. And there we have it! A finished little mini quilt, celebrating an awesome person.

Thanks for reading!