Old Miniature Quilt

I have not had time, nor the energy to work on my miniature since I have been in the field helping with harvest, so today I am showing one of the first miniature quilts I ever made. You can tell from the fabrics that it is pretty old - in fact I finished quilting it in 1992 but pieced it in 1990. Some of the fabrics have faded a little over the years but I still like to hang it up during the fall season.

Around the early 90s I became fascinated by small quilts and found this book by Mary Hickey and fell in love with the little quilts in the book. This was before paper piecing became popular, don't even know if it was even done at this time. If it was it was not widely known as it is now. Her quilts were all pieced the traditional way. I learned how important it was to be very accurate with my cutting and my seams doing these small quilts. There just isn't much "fudge factor" with blocks this small. I made this quilt I named "Maple Leaf Autumn" and several others near the same time - I was hooked on making miniatures after that.

I also hand quilted almost all of the things I made at that time too. I tried to draw small quilting designs to fit these small quilts and to keep my quilting stitches small too. After I finished this quilt I noticed my feathered heart quilting designs were a little off and not square with the block. Now I try to be very particular about these things if I can but still sometimes I just leave it when it is not perfectly square. (You can tell I tend to be a perfectionist - sometimes that is good and sometimes it is bad and keeps you from moving forward with new things as you worry about the imperfection of the piece you just finished.)

The little nine patch blocks in this quilt were 1" square and I thought that they were just so small - never thought I would be piecing things much much smaller now. When I first learned about paper piecing it was wonderful, now I could do my favorite quilts even smaller and keep everything so much more accurate.

I didn't have to drive the grain cart today as they had enough guys to run all the different pieces of equipment - yay! The guys are making good progress today but it just takes time. They were in the field by 8 this morning and will probably work as late as they can haul to the elevator. Last night it was 9 pm when John came in. Some nights it gets closer to 11 pm. If they can they fill all the trucks at night and empty them first thing in the morning it helps. Our bins are full so now everything is being hauled to the elevator and John said the lines are not long today so they are getting dumped pretty quickly. Last week some guys had to wait over an hour or more to dump their trucks. Thank goodness we could haul here most of the time to avoid those long lines.

Am just hoping it doesn't snow here like they are predicting in a couple of days. We still won't be done with harvest and it is a real worry. Farmers depend on their whole years income from their crops. If they can't get it out of the field or if they loose part of it they loose income for a whole year - you only have one chance to grow and harvest that crop each year. The inputs (costs for seed, fertilizer, chemicals, irrigation fuel, etc.) don't change if you don't get a crop - you still have to pay all those bills.

I try not to worry as it doesn't help but still don't breath easy until it is all safely harvested and binned.

Lynn