Mini Art Quilt Necklace Tutorial and Freebee!

Mini Art Quilt Tutorial and Give Away to Everyone!

As promised, I am posting the Tutorial on how I make my Mini Art Quilt Necklaces. I am actually posting it early so you can make yours to wear to Vanessa’s Halloween Party if you would like! I am still learning my way around my Blog so I hope the pictures come out in the right order of the directions. Refer to them as needed. I think you can click on them to make them bigger to see more detail. If you have any questions, just email me. Please leave a comment as to whether you made one or not and if you would like, send me a picture and I will post it on my Blog with a link back to yours! Here we go....

I like to make mine with three little quilts. I just like an odd number of things and one isn’t enough for me and five is too many to wear on my chest unless I make them smaller, so I do three. There are no rules, just tools! These are our creations and we can do whatever we want! I’m just telling you how I did it. You could just do one if you like and decorate the bejebee’s out of it! Make it a giggle, or a WOW factor or anything that will get attention. That’s the whole point, right?! Make it something that you will look down at and say “I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this!”

I like to make a long narrow Mini Art Quilt to use as the “hanger.” Then I tack my other two mini quilts to that piece. The process is to decide and audition fabrics for the front and the back, keeping in mind these are self binding mini quilts so your backing fabric becomes the binding that shows on the front. Make sure you cut all your fabrics on the straight of the grain. You also need to decide if you want to embellish the front fabric before you assemble your mini quilt. On the BeWitched necklace I made for my niece, I printed a photo on muslin, free motion stitched it on the front fabric though the batting and then stamped it before I assembled. I did the beading after I assembled and that was my part of my quilting. Scroll down to the BeWitched Mini Art Quilt Necklace Post to see several photos of it.

Assembling:

Cut your backing fabric 1” larger than the finished mini quilt size you desire. If your fabric has a heavier hand cut it 1 ½” larger to allow for the thickness when folding. I did this on the BeWitched Necklace I made for my niece as the fabric was heavier than the fabric I used on my “Green is my FAVORITE color” Mini Art Quilt Necklace.

I wanted a 3” x 6” rectangle for my “hanger” so I cut my backing fabric 4” x 7”. I used 5” x 5” and 4” x 4” Finished Dimensions for my other two Mini Art Quilts in my Green necklace, but again, use any sizes you want.

Cut your front fabric the SAME dimension as you want the finished mini quilt, so I cut my front fabric 3” x 6” for my long rectangle. Cut your batting the same 3” x 6” (I use Warm and Nat, but use any that you like to quilt through).

Next, lay it on the ironing board with your backing fabric face down, then the batting centered within the backing fabric and finally lay your front fabric face up on top of the batting. Now you are going to create your border. Fold in your backing fabric 1/4” so it butts up next to the edge of your batting. Press. Go to the opposite side and do the same. Finally do the opposite edges. Now fold your backing fabric over the edge of the front fabric, press and pin. Do this all the way around going with opposite sides as before and paying close attention to the corners. That is where a raw edge may peek out at you! Clip some fabric out of the corners if you need to. This gives your Mini Art Quilt finished sharp edges.

Now you need to decide how you want to sew it....by machine or by hand. I do most of mine by hand, just straight stitching or whip stitching all the way around, being sure to catch the front fabric under the binding. I sometimes do both as you can see in the photo.

Once you get your borders sewn down......embellish away!!! This is the fun part. You can quilt by hand or free motion machine stitching or however you desire. If the top fabric has a print that gives you opportunities to use that design, use it as I did with the beads on the dotted design of the fabric. Or you can just quilt with small stitches all over your mini quilt. Start in the center as you would on any quilt to spread the love...hehehehe...and the fullness.

When you have all your Mini Art Quilts done, fold over the top edge of the hanger piece about 1” and tack down to create a tunnel for your necklace piece to go through. Position your other two mini quilts to your liking and tack only at the top so everyone can flip them up and look under them. Trust me....they will! Put a surprise on the underneath one like I did on the BeWitched.....BOO! That gets a real giggle! You could tack a “signature” plate on the back of each mini quilt by using a piece of interfacing that has the date, the name of the quilt and your name printed on it.

You can hang your Mini Art Quilt from a ribbon, fabric tube, crochet chain or any metal chain. I like to take a 44” x 1” strip of fabric, fold it in half lengthwise, and sew across one short end to close it and fold the other 1” end in to have finished ends. You have to leave one end open to turn it. Then I sew a little over 1/4” from the fold. I trim the seam allowance with pinking shears and then turn it right side out. I use turning tubes. Otherwise, turning a 1/4” tube that is 44” long can be a bummer! You can try walking a safety pin down through the tube to turn it and that will work but you can’t be in a hurry! You can also try using a straw and a skewer with a small ball of stuffing on the end of it. I have also sewn a hanging fabric tube with wrong sides together and then did several rows of stitching, leaving the edges raw. That looks pretty neat, too, when you make it part of the overall design of your necklace. And it’s faster. Ribbon is a great alternative as it won’t rub against you mini quilt like a chain will. A ball chain would be interesting! If you have a great technique for turning long skinny tubes, share with us in the comments please and thank you!

Get ready when you wear yours out and about as people will want to buy them right off your chest. Maybe you should just go ahead and put a price tag on them beforehand. Quick and easy and a great “take along” project when you are ready to quilt and embellish!

Enjoy and let me know if you have any questions or I left anything out. If you don’t want to miss any free future tutorials I am planning, please sign up to follow me so you will see when I post them. Leave me a comment and I will email you a PDF sheet of old ephemera from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s that you could print out on muslin and use as fabric on a Mini Art Quilt. I have the originals of these items as shown in the above photo. It’s a Give Away for everyone! If you prefer not leaving your email address in your comment, just email me at Paperkitz@aol.com and I will send the PDF page to you next week.

Happy Blog Hopping with Vanessa at A Fanciful Twist this weekend and thank you for visiting with me!
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