Mouse About Town

Hi Smites,

I hope you're all well! My Mouse About Town Lemonade Stand pattern is now out - I think it's one of my favourite small projects I've ever designed. The little Mouse is a needle sharpener, he's filled with Walnut shells. And the thread roll is the perfect size to fit a large roll of Aurifil 50 weight, along with a tin of thread conditioner. Everything you need for stitching out and about!

All my Lemonade Stand patterns come with a mini quilts to coordinate with them - Mouse About Town comes with this little Trip Around the World mini, and I thought you might like the pattern. The squares are only 1" finished, but you could easily just make them bigger if you wanted to make a big quilt, or leave them the same size - there's some info about that at the bottom.

Enjoy!

Sarah

Mouse About Town Quilt

Cutting - Quilt:

From your 7 fabrics, cut:

 - two strips, 1 1/2” x WOF each. If you re using fat quarters, you will need three strips.

From your 8th fabric, cut:

- one square 1 1/2”

From the binding fabric, cut:

- three strips, 2 1/2”

Construction:

I strongly recommend that you check your seam allowance before you piece this quilt! Sew together two pairs of 1 1/2” squares, press them, then join the pairs. You should have a 2 1/2” square. If you do not you will need to adjust your seam allowance. 

The following method is for the strip sewing construction of a Trip Around the World block. I did not use this method. Instead I cut individual 1 1/2” squares, laid them out in rows and pieced the rows together square by square like this:

It’s the pedantic quilter in me, because I don’t want to repeat a fabric :) It takes a lot more time, but it does have the advantage of a) choosing where each fabric goes and not having a repeat and b) I personally find it more accurate. The strip piecing method below is quicker, but do make very sure that you press all your seams open from the front so that there are no rolls in the seam allowance, and that you check the straightness of your sewing and your cutting every few strips. You can do this by making sure that your ruler is still at 90 degrees with your seams as well as your cut edge, before you make the next cut.

To strip piece your quilt, lay your 7 strips out in a row until you are happy with the colour placement.  You want to make sure that you have some lights and darks, and they are placed apart from each other, or from light to dark, so that you have some contrast in the diamond pattern when they’re pieced together. You will need two sets of strips pieced in the same configuration for this quilt. 

Take note for yourself which of your fabrics is FABRIC 1 and which is FABRIC 7.

Sew the strips together along the length. As you are sewing long strips, its good practice to piece one from right to left, and the next from left to right. This helps to stop the strips from warping as you sew. I like to sew strips 1 and 2 together for both sets, then press, then sew on the strip 3 then press, etc, instead of piecing them all in a big wad and then pressing - it helps you to make sure that all your seams are flat and your strips are not pressed out of shape. 

When you have the strip sets pieced, cut rows of squares from each set, taking care to check the 90 degree angle as you go as mentioned above, and straighten the cut if needs be. You will need 32 set pieces in total. I strongly suggest that you mark these sets of rows as you go so that you don’t get mixed up!

Set aside 8 sets, just as they are. These are four for Row 1 and four for the sashing. Take another 4 sets.

Unpick the Fabric 1 square from these sets, and stitch it to the end of the row, to Fabric 7. Press. This is Row 2.

Unpick the Fabric 1 and 2 squares (unpick one seam only, you want them to be a set of two squares!) from another 4 sets, and stitch them to the end of the row again. This is Row 3.

Repeat this method until you have 7 sets of rows, plus the ones for the sashing.

Lay the rows out from 1 to 7, keeping the sashing sets aside. Press the seams on every second row in the other direction so that they will nest as you stitch. Stitch the rows together in order of the seven strips, to make a square 7 squares x 7 squares. 

Make 4 squares the same. 

Take your remaining 4 sashing strips (you should already have these cut!)

Lay the four squares out, rotating them as you go, so that the diamond pattern forms (see the photograph of the quilt for reference). Place a sashing strip between each pair of squares, making sure that you have the fabrics in the right place. 

Making sure you have everything in the right configuration, stitch a pair of squares together with a sashing strip, and then the second pair.

Stitch the 8th fabric square in between the two remaining sashing strips and press. Stitch the two pairs of squares together with this sashing strip in between. Press well.

Your quilt top is done! I hand quilted my little quilt using masking tape to guide my straight lines. Quilt as desired, then join all your binding strips into one long strip using a mitred seam. Press the strip in half with the raw edges together, then stitch the strip to the front of the quilt, with the raw edges of the binding matching the raw edges of the quilt. Mitre the corners as you go. Turn the binding to the back of the quilt and hand sew it down to finish. 

**a note!! I realise that these squares are SMALL. It’s a dolly quilt after all, they can’t be too large!

However if you would like to piece this to be the same size quilt but with larger squares, cutting the strips at 2” instead will give you 1 1/2” finished squares, and the quilt will come out at 17” finished. To do this, you will only use FIVE sets of fabric instead of 7 (and the extra square at the centre).

This block is one of my favourites for a large quilt. At 16” finished, you would need 16 blocks to make a 64” throw (four rows of four). Here’s an idea of what the layout would look like - personally I would use different fabrics for every block though.

You will be able to buy the full pattern here if you aren't in the Lemonade Stand program.