Pickled Leftovers

I'm still working on my pickle dish quilt.  I made a few extra blocks to give myself some flexibility in layout, so I decided to use them to make a mini-quilt.

I used this to practice sewing the curves to the central background piece.  The pattern calls for piecing this center in quarters, but I wanted to try keeping it as a single unit.  It came together pretty well, and I learned a few things that will be helpful as I start adding the background to the full quilt.

I also wanted to practice some quilting ideas.  I used a feather motif in the central background piece:

I borrowed the idea for straight lines in the arcs from this quilt.  At first I tried to free-hand these lines, but that did not work well at all.  After ripping out my first attempt, I tried using a ruler.  I ended up taping two small rulers together to get the thickness I need.  I'm mostly pleased with the results, but I will be shopping for a proper ruler for use with my domestic machine.

I'm hoping I can use these same quilting designs in the full quilt (I'm a little worried about using a ruler while maneuvering a large quilt).

Here's a shot of the back.  Somehow I got my directionality mixed up -- I wanted the darker fabric running up and down -- but that's not a big deal.  These are a couple of fabrics I had purchased for the top but ended up not using.

For wall hangings I usually put a couple of large triangle pockets in the top back corners, but for larger pieces like this they can get a bit floppy.  For this mini, I used smaller triangles and added a couple of straps near the center.

I had purchased a small cut of an Amy Butler fabric from an online store for the purpose of auditioning it for use as background in the larger quilt.  I decided against using it there, but I'm happy with it here.  The border is all made from leftovers from the quilt.

We had a rare snow overnight, so I couldn't resist getting a few shots of my snowman wall hanging too.

I have two Friday finishes in a row!