Orphan quilt blocks find a new home in the Lunar Eclipse hand quilted wall hanging

I made a quilted mini!

Shocker, I know – ha!

And the funny thing is I had no plans or intentions on making this one. She just happened!

Here’s how it all went down.

While I was designing the Lunar Eclipse quilt pattern, I did some tests on the block construction. As you know, with quilting there are often lots of ways to tackle the piecing. My goal is always to design a pattern that is efficient and easy to piece, makes good use of your fabric and, above all, is fun to stitch!

After making a series of Lunar Eclipse quilt blocks, I realized I could modify the block design to reduce the number of pieces to cut and make it quicker for you to whip together.

That’s the great news! But then I was stuck with these orphan blocks that I didn’t want to chuck.

So, I pulled the orphan quilt blocks into a mini quilted wall hanging 😊

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Quilting Direction

With so many projects on the go, I fully intended to machine quilt her but as she hung out on my design wall (here’s a tutorial to make your own), I couldn’t help but think she’d look pretty cute with some big stitch hand quilting!

Before overthinking this too much and before I talked myself out of it, I headed straight to my thread storage in search of the perfect thread colours.

Thread Selection

It didn’t take me long to settle on these pretties, which match the colours in the *Spectratastic II fabric collection I featured in this quilt perfectly. I loved the texture and hand-stitched details I snuck into the Lunar Eclipse lap quilt I made and wanted to take that a step further with the hand quilting in the mini version.

To help keep things on point, I opted to plot my lines with a *Hera marker to try and keep the curved stitches balanced throughout the project.

Binding Details

To frame her out nicely and keep the focus on the centre motif, I opted to bind her in the dark teal fabric. I love how the dark colour gives the mini a bold frame and means the white is just a subtle pop. I paired it with this gorgeous dark green 28wt thread to tack down the binding with a blind stitch (tutorial on how to do this here). I love how clean the finish is and helps the quilting on the back really pop!

She’s now found a forever home in my BFF’s new home. I finally got to see the place over the summer holidays and hand-delivered his housewarming gift! What’s fun is that the colours I selected are the very colours his living room features! It was totally meant to be 😊

Materials Featured

What’s so fun about making smaller quilts is that you don’t need a ton of materials to make them happen. Here’s everything I used to create the Lunar Eclipse hand-quilted wall hanging:

• Lunar Eclipse quilt pattern – I just made 4 blocks and stitched them together!
• *Spectratastic II designed by Giucy Giuce for Andover Fabrics:
  • *Chartreuse
  • *Turquoise
  • *Yellow
  • *Navy
  • *Blue
  • *Gray
  • *Dark Teal
  • *White
• * Aurifil 50wt cream thread for piecing
• * Aurifil 12wt turquoise thread for hand quilting
• Gray & Yellow pearl cotton thread for hand quilting – *from this kit
• *White thread for hand quilting
• *Navy thread for hand quilting – *from this kit
• *100% cotton batting
• *Leather thimble
• *Hera marker
• *Needle for hand quilting
• Thread gloss (optional)
• 28wt Aurifil Thread for hand binding
• *Straw needle for hand binding

Getting Your Quilted Mini Qll Hanging Ready

If you’ve been wondering what the best way is to hang your quilted wall hanging up on the wall, then I’m happy to share two fun options to check out:

• Classic Hanging Sleeve – works for any sized quilt
• Hanging Quilt Tabs – perfect for your smaller projects

Have you used orphan quilt blocks to create a modern mini quilted wall hanging? Share in the comments below what your favourite way is to use up orphan quilt blocks!

Happy stitching!

xo,

Shannon

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