Modern Meets Modern challenge quilt

The International Quilt Museum in Nebraska recently ran a “Modern Meets Modern” challenge where makers were invited to create a 16″ x 16″ mini quilt from several possible antique inspiration quilts. After initially thinking I wasn’t going to enter, I decided I wanted to make a mini after all, and Spaghetti Junction is the result, and my final finish for 2021!

This mini is based on the Carpenter’s Square inspiration quilt. As it happened, this is a design I’d already created after flipping through my quilt block encyclopedias earlier this fall. I’d been working on a design for another project (more on that soon!), and this one didn’t make the cut for the final quilt, but it was my personal favorite out of that batch. So the Modern Meets Modern challenge was sort of a fortuitous excuse to make this design after all.

The strips are ½” finished. Figuring out how to put them together was a bit of a challenge; because they are pretty small I decided I’d rather not break them up and so this quilt is constructed with a whole lot of partial seams.

Backing & Quilting

I’m trying to use the fabric I have, especially all the random fat quarters I’ve accumulated over the years, and so the backing on this is pieced. I wanted to trim the mini after quilting, and as a result the top was just a little too big for just a single fat quarter. I chose a couple prints that I thought complemented the shapes and colors in the quilt top well.

Although I often do mini quilts on my domestic sewing machine, I quilted this on my longarm. It just about fit entirely within the available throat space, and I wanted to use my channel locks to keep the lines straight.

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I left the colored bits unquilted, and also included some unquilted ½” strips in the negative space to echo the piecing. The rest of the quilting is ⅛” apart.

You can see the quilting particularly well on the back.

Edge finish

I finished the quilt with a facing, which I seem to do almost as often as a traditional binding. For quilts like this, where there are strong elements right at the edge of the quilt, a binding often feels like it would cut off the visual motion too much. So in those cases, I often opt for the facing, which doesn’t create a border at the edge of the quilt like a traditional binding. (If you haven’t tried one of these before, I’ve got a video on how to apply a facing to your quilt!)

Let me know your thoughts on a pattern!

I’m not sure when the Modern Meets Modern challenge winners will be announced, but I’m very happy with the way this mini quilt turned out. In fact, I like this design so much that I am thinking of making a larger version/pattern in different colorways. But I’m curious, if I make this a pattern, how would you feel about partial seams in a quilt pattern? Yea or nay? Leave me a comment and let me know!