May 31, 2021: May Monthly Mini

Greetings readers! For 2/3 of the month I had a hard time coming up with an idea for a mini that would engage me enough to start making. By May 20th it was pretty much “now or never” time and luckily inspiration struck! The day before I had been to the NE Quilt Museum to see Wendy Reed and her exhibit and I remembered being struck by her use of black in her wonderful half square triangle quilt, “Kathy’s Fabric (Boudreau’s Surprise)”:

Obviously I wasn’t going to make anything as elaborate as Wendy’s quilt with the beautiful cheddar appliquéd center and that gorgeous border fabric, but I could make a mini half square triangle quilt featuring black in half the squares and using brighter reproduction fabrics. I decided to limit myself to pink, green, blue, and yellow colors and to make the HST’s 1.5 inches finished. I’d use 8 different fabrics of each color and find a reproduction black print that I had enough of. Here’s my fabric pull:

And here is the finished quilt!

It is 17 inches square and the colors radiate out in order in each quadrant, rather than being randomly placed. Placing the yellow HSTs where they are highlights the vision of the on point square in the center.

I also didn’t want the “flying geese” effect of the blacks coming together in the middle of each side so I added the pink strips down the center vertically and horizontally to separate those squares:

I finished it with the black fabric for the border, with pink squares in the corners and a poison green/black fabric for the binding, and then hand quilted it very simply with straight lines, on point. You can see the quilting best from the back:

The center of the quilt, without the borders, is 12.5 inches. I could see how several of those blocks together could make an interesting larger quilt. Maybe even set on point:

Will have to put that idea in my “some day, maybe” list…. 🙂 For now, I am grateful to have been inspired by my trip to the museum, by all of Wendy’s quilts, and especially, in this case, by her wonderful half square triangle quilt. Go to Wendy’s blog, “The Constant Quilter” to see all the Monthy Minis for May!

Be kind, be grateful, and cherish each day, Gladi