Modern Mini Day - RAAAAAH!

Hello! Today is my day on the Modern Mini Challenge Blog Hop. I've never participated in a blog hop before but when the lovely Jennifer asked me, I took a deep breath and jumped in! I'm really excited (and a bit nervous) but here goes!

While I was thinking of designs to make for a modern mini, I stumbled upon this happy scene in my son's bedroom and it just made me smile. My youngest son has a severe case of dinosaur-itis. We call him 'Dino-boy'

A large part of my day is spent marveling at the amazingness of dinosaurs with him and it seemed best to just embrace the dinosaur-itis for now and make him a mini quilt :) RAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!

This quilt is really easy to make, and there's a wee tutorial below if your interested in making something similar. Obviously you don't have to make a dinosaur!

To make it you will need a few supplies:

• A shape. I googled 'Triceratops shape' and found this great silhouette which I printed out, but you could use any shape you fancy, you could just draw your own picture if you want.
• Some bondaweb / wunder-under / vliesofix or similar
• A pencil
• short length of ric rac
• some little scraps of fabric (I used some of the little scraps I saved from making my son's quilt)
• Some pins, scissors, an iron, some backing fabric, border fabric (I used 2.5" strips), wadding, backing and binding

Start by drawing around your chosen shape on the paper-side of your Bondaweb (remember this will be the mirror image of the finished shape). I decided to keep the head and body 2 separate pieces, so I could use some ric rac to emphasise the triceratops' frilly-hood-thing.

Turn it over and start covering the whole of the sticky side of the shape in your little scraps. I chopped mine up quite small, but you could just use one piece of fabric to cover the whole thing if you'd prefer.

I wanted the head to be quite distinct from the body so I chose contrasting colours for where the head and body meet.

I found it useful to slip a white sheet of paper underneath so it was easy to see any areas I'd missed.

I gently touched each scrap with the tip of my iron as I went to stop them moving around.

Once all the shape was covered, I used larger scraps to make sure ALL the sticky side of the Bondaweb was covered to protect my iron, and I left the paper underneath to protect my ironing board.



Then press to fuse all the fabric to the Bondaweb, following the fusing instructions of whatever product you are using.

Cut out your shape

And carefully peel off the paper backing and fuse it to your background fabric, again following the product instructions. Be gentle with your scrappy shape, mine was quite fragile before I fused it to the background.

Now for the fun part!

I love ric rac but have never been able to use it in a project for my boys before. This was the perfect opportunity to squeeze a little bit in :)

Cut a length of Ric rac a bit longer than your triceratops' frilly-hood-thing

Turn each end under and pin in place.

Now you can fuse the head to the background fabric.

Sew around the whole shape, just inside the edge. I used dark grey thread and outlined it twice, to try to define the details of the head, horns and legs.

Then I added a matching border, before layering and basting.

I quilted the triceratops first with a really tiny stipple. This secured any flappy bits of the scraps and gave him a bit of a pre-historic scaly armour texture :)

Then I did a larger stipple all over the background. (Please excuse my dodgy quilting, I'm getting better than I was, but I'm still learning!)

Before attaching the binding, I made hanging pockets by folding 2 squares of fabric in half diagonally (I used 5" squares but the size doesn't really matter)

I pinned them to the top 2 corners of the quilt, and then carefully attached the binding.

Then I cut a length of wooden doweling roughly the same size as my quilt and popped it into the triangular pockets.

Then you hang it on the wall and enjoy the smile on dino-boy's face when he sees it :)

My oldest boy is doing a project at school about dinosaurs, and has pronounced this Triceratops anatomically correct.... Phew!

If you've made it this far, thankyou so much for reading! I hope this has shown you how easy it can be to make what looks like a complicated shape.

If you have any questions, please ask. I kind of made a lot of it up as I went along, but I'll try to help.

Thankyou so much to Jennifer for running this fantastic blog hoppping challenge. If you haven't already had a look at some of the inspiring Modern Minis to get you in the mood, you really should. There are fantastic prizes to be won!

A BIG THANKS goes out to Kimberly at the Fat Quarter Shop for generously sponsoring all five of our fabulous prizes. 

The five winners will be chosen as follows: 

James’ choice (Jennifer's Husband chooses his favorite) 

Viewer’s choice Mug Rugs

Viewer’s choice Mini Quilts 

(mug rugs and mini quilts- the viewers choose from a selection chosen by myself and three other bloggers) 

Luck of the Draw (Random Number Generator chooses 2 winners)

So what are those fabulous five prizes? Hold on to your hats! 

Source: fatquartershop.com via Jennifer Mathis on Pinterest

Both Viewer’s Choice Winners will receive a fat quarter bundle of the FULL LINE of Flea Market Fancy reprint by Denyse Schmidt. 

James’ Choice Winner will receive a $100 gift certificate to the Fat Quarter Shop

Both Luck of the Draw Winners will receive a $75 gift certificate to Fat Quarter Shop

Below is the line-up for the blog-hop: 

2/6: Stitchery Dickory Dock

2/7: Fairy Face Designs & Amy's Creative Side

2/8: Lily's Quilts

2/9: Patchwork Notes

2/10: Don't Call Me Betsy & Flying Blind on a Rocket Cycle

2/11: Sukie, Don't You Know Who I Am? 

2/12: Freshly Pieced

2/13: From the Blue Chair & Poppy Makes

2/14: Needles, Pins & Baking Tins

2/15: Mon Petit Lyons & Felicity Quilts

2/16: LR Stitched & Random Thoughts of Do or Di

2/17: Life's Rich Pattern & Twin Fibers

2/18: Cut to Pieces & Sew Sweetness

2/19: Swim Bike Quilt

Contest Requirements:
1. Create a modern mini quilt or mug rug - only one entry per person
2. Enter your mini quilt or mug rug in the linky party at Ellison Lane Quilts on Monday, March 5.
You do NOT have to have a blog to enter. You may link a picture from your Flickr account.
3. Your entry (blog post or Flickr description) should include the size of the item


Now do I have to decide, do I make another mini to enter the competition, or do I enter this one?!


Thankyou from Fiona and RAH! from dino-boy x