I finally finished piecing, basting, quilting, binding, and photographing Navigation: my Perfect HST quilt and its mini! I started this at the beginning of last year when the amazing Lee Heinrich came out with the Perfect Half-Square Triangle templates and hosted a quilt along that used these amazing pieces of paper.
The templates are like paper piecing meets never having to trim half-square triangles ever again. You can get them on Lee’s site for less than $10, and they come in sizes from 1″ finished to 6″ finished. Just check them out. You won’t be sorry!
The mini quilt also counts towards this year’s goal of making five minis for the wall in my studio!
About the Quilt Along
One of the things I really like about the online quilting community is getting to know everyone a little better. Each block in the quilt was from somewhere Lee’s lived, and she told the story about her life at that time with each block. From tiny post-college apartments to her family home, every story was so neat to read. I love it when we can share those parts of our lives in our art.
Since I was trying a new technique, I wanted everything else to be as easy as possible. And since Lee is amazing at picking solid color combinations, I went with the same colors as her pattern. I’m definitely not sorry I did that!
I struggled a little bit the first month because of the thickness of the cutting lines. Do I cut on the inside? The outside? I tried a couple ways before I had a duh moment and realized cutting down the center was the way to go. I’m a pretty smart girl, but I can be really dumb sometimes.
One of the things I loved about the pattern was the pressing directions. When you press seams based on the instructions, every seam will nest so beautifully, and all my points matched up amazingly.
A Bonus Mini Quilt
If you saved your extra pieces every month you had enough to make either a mini quilt or a baby quilt. The mini was too mini for me, and the baby was too big, so I modified it a little more and came up with this:
And for some reason, I thought that I could over-quilt a mini and not have it drive me crazy. Reader, I was wrong. But I’m really happy with how the echo quilting turned out in the end. I also love how scrunchy quilts get after you wash them. So cuddly!
All My Blocks
I managed to take really good pictures of all the blocks as I went. This was just so fun to put together!
Ridgeline Star
Wellington Star
Belden Star
Dupont Star
Hillcrest Star
Crystal Star
Rambling Star
Cedar Star
Lakeshore Star
Pinewood Star
Navigator Star
Sawtooth Star
On Labeling Quilts
I’m a huge believer in labeling quilts. You are doing a favor to anyone who finds it in the future or if it’s lost or stolen. Labels can also tell the story about the maker and recipient. I custom designed my labels at Spoonflower so that I only have to enter the name and date of the quilt. I also sew it into my backing so it’s quilted in. That makes it harder for someone to remove the label if the quilt stolen.
I date my labels with the month and year I make the backing, so please don’t judge how long this took to get done!!
Sir’s baby sister just moved into a new apartment, so we’re sending this one off to her so she has something cuddly in the new space.