Patchwork of the Crosses Mini Quilt

If you've been following my blog in recent months you may have come across pictures of the mini quilt in progress.  I've now finished the quilt top and layered up to quilt it, so here's the story so far.

I bought the quilt as a kit from The Bramble Patch at the Festival of Quilts in August last year.

Here it is on the bottom right of the picture.  I saw the mini quilt made up on the stand there and this was the last kit left so I had to have it.  It was a spare kit from a subscriber club that The Bramble Patch ran last year called Mini Treasures by Hand Mystery Club 2019.  As well as the instructions it contained the pack of (350!) honeycomb hexagons, squared card and 'house' shape pieces, cream fabric and a charm square pack, which was called Sweet Violet, designed by Jan Patek.  This kit's design is based on Lucy Boston's Patchwork of the Crosses.  It is a design that lends itself to fussy cutting, to use the best elements of the fabric design.

The pieces are small.  The honeycomb papers have ½" sides and are ¾" tall.  Here's a comparison with a standard 1" hexagon.

I started on this project soon after coming home from the Festival of Quilts and quickly realised that to work small you have to think small.  To help with the layout of the tiny pieces I made a small 6½" square layout board, which is a piece of mount board, with wadding and a small fabric border.  I then used binding clips to clip a piece of netting to help stop any small hexies disappearing.

So the piece slowly started to grow, starting with a flurry in August (the enthusiasm of a new project, of course!). The two pics below were taken on 6th and 10th August.

The two square soon became 4 squares

Then the little squares ½" were attached between the blocks and you can see just one purple 'house' shape in the middle. This was taken in mid October.

It was then adding the small squares around the edges and adding the half blocks so that the square shape above turned on point. The pic below was taken in January.

And more added

The finished top

So the top was finished on 11th April. Yes, it has jagged edges but they will be squared off after quilting and will measure 15.5” square.  It has been a really good pick up/put down project -albeit a small one.  I have now layered with wadding and backing fabric (Cream Moda Grunge fabric). I found fabric for the binding, which is a tonal violet William Morris patterned fabric which will go really well and in keeping with Sweet Violet design.