A common question from an interested buyer is often “how long does it take to make an art quilt?” Those of you who are quilters know that the larger the quilt, the longer the hours. Hence, last week when I had only two days free to sew I decided to make some smaller quilts which take significantly less time, both to piece and to quilt and bind.
Here are two fun landscapes I created. The first is a small art quilt of a beach sunrise scene. I often make these designs in much larger dimensions so it was kind of fun to trim back the size and do what felt almost like a mini art quilt at 
12″ x 15″. The fabric choices are more important when you don’t have the space to layer different shades and colors. And the free motion quilt stitching is also more dramatic. I deviated from my usual dark binding and used a medium brown/beige fabric for the binding which plays off the early morning light colors of the whole quilt.
The second quilt is a TREE design with some mountain scenery, again smaller at 17.5″ square than the usual larger sizes I tend to create. I forget how much easier quilting is with these smaller quilts!! So many of my TREE quilts are large in the height dimension and therefore need long pieces for the trees which often reach from top to bottom. I am getting quite a collection of tree fabric pieces which are less than 20″ long so I see more smaller TREE quilts in my future. Sometimes you need to look at your fabrics and start designing….sort of like cooking with the food in the house.