Mini Maze (Ugly Fabric Challenge)

In April, my guild kicked off another annual challenge! Last year the theme was Alison Glass fabric and I made my beloved Geometry of Circles quilt. This year we went with another fabric theme, but in a very different direction — “ugly” fabric! Someone had donated a fairly large bin of old fabrics (from the 80s, we’re guessing?) to our guild president (who owns a shop), and we thought a guild challenge would be a great way to put it to use. She cut a bunch of fat quarters and we were off!

The rules were simple:

• Make ANY quilted item — quilt, wall hanging, bag, table runner, etc.
• Use at least 2 of the 3 fabrics in your bag
• Vintage fabric MUST be visible/recognizable — and not just as a backing or lining.
• You can add anything else you want — other fabrics, embellishments, stamping, etc.

When I opened up my bag, here’s what I found:

None of these were fabrics I would ever buy on my own! My favorite was the peachy-pink floral, and my least favorite (by far) was the tiny floral stripe. Still, while I knew I only needed to use 2 of them, I wanted to see if I could make all 3 work.

I pretty quickly settled on doing some sort of design with tiny piecing involved, as a way to incorporate each fabric while still being able to minimize the overall effect of the less-than-modern florals. I started skimming through a folder I have on my computer at home full of quilt ideas and found this idea.

It’s based on an image (that I sadly cannot find right now) of a tile floor. I love how the same block can be turned in any direction and still match up with the blocks surrounding it, so that you get a series of unbroken, meandering lines that look exactly like an old-school maze! I drew up a paper piecing template for this last year, or maybe the year before, and even submitted this pattern idea to a couple places without success.

So, what better time than now? I thought the “ugly” fabric would work very well as the lines of the maze, so I printed out a bunch of templates and got down to work with some serious paper piecing. (I think it’s probably possible to make this pattern with traditional piecing, but it’d be pretty challenging to maintain accuracy that way.)

Paper piecing a lot of straight lines is not the most exciting thing, and it admittedly got a little tedious. Making a larger quilt would be quite the undertaking with these 6″ blocks. My original pattern draft was a 12″ block, and that would be a lot better for a bigger quilt.

But the end result was worth it! The two halves of each block came together very easily thanks to nested seams. Matching up each block with its neighbor took a little more care, but I turned to glue basting — which is quickly becoming my paper piecing BFF — and things worked out very well.

When I mocked up this quilt originally, I had envisioned straight line quilting from side to side, with one bold line of big stitch hand quilting running along one of the maze paths. With that in mind, I decided to try hand quilting this entire mini! There’s one line of pink thread running through the middle, and the other quilting lines are all white.

I was afraid it would take a lot of time, but the process was surprisingly quick once I got started and the whole thing only took a few hours spread over my long 4th of July 4-day weekend. And the texture is so awesome! I’m really glad I went for it.

One note: before I started hand quilting, I machine stitched “in the ditch” between each block to help stabilize the quilt sandwich. I hadn’t planned to remove those stitches, but when I was done quilting, I decided I wanted them gone. Next time I’ll be more prepared and use a longer basting stitch!

For the backing, I used all the leftover “ugly” fabric and some solids. Instead of binding, I faced this quilt — I didn’t want anything on the front edges that would interrupt the lines of the maze.

The stats:

• Quilt measures 24″ square.
• Original design by me.
• Fabrics are three “ugly” fabrics of unknown origin, plus solids from my stash in pink, blue, peach, and white.
• Hand quilted with old embroidery thread I inherited from my grandmother.