January Minis

I've had my "Calorie-Free Chocolates" quilt on the dining room display hanger since the holidays.   Looking at those chocolate Nine Patch and Snowball blocks every day inspired me to try some mini snowballs and nine patches this month.

I had just enough chocolate fabric scraps and some chocolate-y brown fabric to make two six-inch mug rugs.  I used Barb Vedder's Nine Patch tutorial to make two sets of Nine Patch blocks.  

I even had some chocolate-dipped strawberry fabric scraps to use for the backs.  

I had designs on making at least one additional Snowball-themed project, but got distracted by other ideas!

 

For example, as I was digging through the drawers looking for French General fabrics, I came across a group of scraps I had saved in a plastic bag.  

The leftovers were from a fabric collection called "Alice's Washday Blues" by Blue Hill Fabrics.  I had used the collection to make blocks for Barbara Brackman's Grandmother's Choice BOW.  

I kept all the scraps together in hopes of using them up in another project, but forgot about them until discovering them earlier this month.  Thinking about Janet's "baggie challenge", I decided it was time to put those scraps to work!

I had a new-to-me 3.5 inch tumbler die for the Accuquilt cutter, and I decided tumbler blocks would be a great scrap-buster.  I thought the Alice scraps might be a little bland on their own, so I found a hunk of red to spice things up a little.  Since my goal was to use up as many scraps as possible, I just kept adding blocks until I ran out of tumblers.

 

A different red fabric for the binding...and I used a single binding this time.  I don't know why I never tried single binding before, but it works great, especially if you follow another of Barb's tutorials. 

A final row of tumblers on the back, two slices of backing left from a previous project, and outline quilting finish the project.

 

 I wasn't going to add a label, but inspiration struck today and I had a name: Alice's Last Washday.  I also found this sliced piece of selvedge, so I'm trying to come up with a way to incorporate it into the label.

And so goes my monthly mini tale!  Many thanks to Wendy (The Constant Quilter) for encouraging mini madness for another year!