Trendy tiny piecing: A free wall hanging project

Today I have a fun little project that incorporates two of today’s hottest quilting trends: Tiny piecing, and stretching pieced fabric onto a canvas!

In today’s post, we’re going to talk about how to tackle tiny piecing and how to sew this itty-bitty little quilt top. Then, rather than quilting this little project, instead we’ll stretch it onto a canvas, so that the piece is suitable for hanging on a wall. It’s an easy, quick, modern way to finish a project, which I’ll cover in tomorrow’s post.

But first, let’s make the quilt top!

Materials to make a tiny pieced quilt top

Various solid colors:
• (32) 1-1/2” squares
• (1) 2-1/2” square
• (4) 2-1/2” squares, cut in half diagonally to make 8 triangles (Piece 2 of the Flying Geese Paper-Piecing Templates)

White solid:
• (4) squares 1-1/2”
• (4) pieces 3” x 2” (Piece 1 of the Flying Geese Paper-Piecing Templates)
• (2) pieces 1” x 4-1/2”
• (2) pieces 3-1/4” x 4-1/2”
• (1) piece 5-1/4” x 19”
• (1) piece 9-3/4” x 19”

Make the 16-Patch Blocks

1. Before you cut, a quick tip: I’m not usually big on starch, but when you’re piecing small, starch (or starch alternatives) are a great help by stiffening up the fabric a bit. I sprayed my fabric liberally with Flatter from Soak and pressed before cutting.

2. We’re making two blocks that are 4” finished—each block uses 16 of the 1-1/2” squares. So start by selected 16 squares and arrange them as desired.

3. I find patchwork blocks like this piece more accurately when I piece them in groups rather than in rows. So in this case, I’m piecing them in groups of four (each quarter of the block), with seams pressed to the side, and then piecing together the four quarters.

Finished block! Make two of these!

Make the Star Block

For this block, we’re going to use paper-piecing to make the star points. You COULD make these points using standard half-square triangle or flying geese piecing. For those non-paper-piecers out there, feel free to use your favorite method to make the star-point units. But here’s my pitch for using paper-piecing: When it comes to paper-piecing, size doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t! So it’s perfect for tiny piecing. I once made an entire owl that measured only about 3” square using paper-piecing. It sounds and looks challenging, but trust me: Paper-piecing, with its “just-sew-on-the-line” style of accuracy, allows you to make anything, at any size, accurately and without the stress of traditional piecing. And if you get into REALLY tiny piecing (because some people are piecing stars MUCH smaller than this one), paper-piecing becomes a necessity.

So, ready to make some paper-pieced star points? Start by downloading my free Tiny Flying Geese templates right here. (Psst - if you like this Flying Geese, check out my Perfect Flying Geese templates. One downloadable PDF with 14 different sizes/configurations of Flying Geese templates, for all your projects! Click here to get it.)

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2. Paper-piece the flying geese points by starting with the White 3” x 2” pieces as Piece #1, and the colored 2-1/2” squares cut in half diagonally as Piece #2.

3. Sew and trim 4 Flying Geese Units, and remove the paper. The finished Flying Geese Units should measure 1-1/2” x 2-1/2”.

4. Assemble the star blocks as shown. Press seams away from the Flying Geese Units.

Your blocks are now complete!

Assemble the Mini-quilt Top

Assemble the quilt top as shown in the diagram below. Press seams in the direction of the arrows.

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That’s it—a trendy mini-quilt top using tiny pieced blocks! I intentionally left about 2-1/2” inches of blank space along each edge of the mini quilt so that it could be wrapped around a stretched canvas. We’ll cover more about that in the next post, but the canvas I purchased for this project is 14” x 14” square.