Kaleidoscope Mini Quilt

I just love miniature quilts and can't get enough of looking at them online.  I recently picked up a miniature quilt book, Teeny-Tiny Quilts by Donna Lynn Thomas, and got a lot of good tips for working at a small scale.  I've also been attracted to the kaleidoscope quilts and made one years ago using foundation paper piecing.  That quilt is still one of my favorites and I keep it on display.

The new color strategy with kaleidoscope quilts is wonderful, adopting a mandala theme, so I tackled another.  This one I decided to do on a very small scale and using English paper piecing.  English paper piecing is not new to me, having made two throw-sized quilts in recent years, a traditional hexagon and stars quilt and the more complicated La Passacaglia quilt made popular by Willyne Hammerstein with her first in the Millefiori series.

This quilt is roughly 19 x 19 inches, so definitely in the miniature quilt category.  English Paper Piecing has always been good for getting all of those tips lined up just right and on such a small scale it fit the bill.

I used supima cotton fabrics for the solids (light blue, med/dark blue, and dark brown) because I loved the sheen, but I won't do that again, especially at such a small scale.  The fabric is very prone to fraying, with lots of super fine threads (which is what gives it the sheen), but I don't think it adds enough to the finish product to be worth the hassle.