My Tea Party Quilt in APQ Magazine

Used with permission from American Patchwork & Quilting® magazine. ©2019 Meredith Corporation. All rights reserved.

It's amazing to me how many events in my life have been marked by a tea party. My mother loved to splurge at least once a year by taking my sister and I to a tea room in our small town when we were growing up, and sometimes my grandmother would come along too. For our first official date, my husband James took me to the Rose Garden tea room at the Huntington Library in California on a rainy January day. I remember walking around the gardens with him afterward, sharing an umbrella together as we laughed and talked and took our first steps into the most important relationship of our lives. I took my extended wedding party out for tea before I got married, joined my mother and mother-in-law for tea when James' parents came to visit from Arizona, and celebrated a bittersweet tea party with the women in my family before we left California for Texas. I've hosted special holiday teas in my home for friends and family each year, and I've enjoyed making tea and cookies for my daughters on Friday afternoons to celebrate the end of a long week. Every family has little traditions that become part of the fabric of who they are, and this has definitely been one of ours.

So it seemed like such a natural fit to design the Tea Party quilt featured in the June issue of American Patchwork & Quilting magazine. I wanted to make a different kind of sampler quilt, something small that would be fun for fussy cutting, and I loved the idea of using tiny traditional quilt blocks to decorate teacup blocks. The flying geese border makes me think of a string of party bunting all around the quilt. It looks so happy!

There's nothing that I enjoy more than a scrappy quilt, and this project is perfect for emptying out the scrap basket, especially treasured little bits that are out of print now. Some of these fabrics were designed by wonderful friends and a few were even from my own collections, so that made this quilt extra special to me.

I think this mini would be so sweet to hang on the wall in a kitchen or dining room or even a child's room. Finishing at only 38 1/2" square, it makes a nice gift for a little one. I often made quilts this size for my daughters to use as play mats for tea parties or soft spots to cuddle up with a pillow and a picture book when they were young. If you don't have time to make a whole quilt, try turning one block into a cute mug rug (see the magazine for this adorable idea from one of their project testers). And wouldn't these blocks make such a darling set of little tea time placemats?

Used with permission from American Patchwork & Quilting® magazine. ©2019 Meredith Corporation. All rights reserved.

If you make one of these, please share it! You can add the hashtag #teapartyminiquilt, and be sure to tag me @fabricmutt. The June issue of American Patchwork and Quilting is out on newstands now -- isn't that cover quilt amazing?! -- so be sure to grab a copy while you can!