Cinque Terre: A Mini QAL

The year is speeding through, and we’re nearly up to May! Crazy! May is the fifth month of the year, and what better excuse than that to make a new Cinque Terre mini quilt… Cinque meaning five 😉 And thus, the Cinque Terre QAL was born! I am cohosting this event with Ava & Neve – exclusive stockist of Cinque Terre paper patterns and kits. And we even have a prize to motivate you to finish your project. Keep reading to find out all the details.

Psst – if you’re wondering why you would make a mini quilt, here’s a post for you to read on why make mini quilts. In summary? Because we love to create, even for the sake of creating.

Cinque Terre Quilt

The inspiration for this quilt pattern comes from Italy and the region known as Cinque Terre – “five lands” – a part of the coastline of the Italian Riviera. It’s known for it’s bright and colourful buildings within the five villages that make up Cinque Terre – just look at those beautiful colours with the dark dots of windows!

Corniglia – image from Wikipedia, by chensiyuan – chensiyuan, CC BY-SA 4.0

The Cinque Terre quilt pattern is a quick and sweet little mini quilt that finishes at 24″ x 24″. It is the perfect pattern to show off nine fat-16ths of Liberty fabrics, just like you receive in a Liberty fabric club like the Liberty Society. My first version has light dots of windows, and the fabrics were all based around pulling out the individual colours featured in the central yellow print.

Cinque Terre QAL

To join in the fun, you will need the Cinque Terre pattern. You can buy the:

Cinque Terre PDF pattern from my store

OR

Cinque Terre paper pattern or DIY a Cinque Terre kit from Ava & Neve

The quilt along will run from May 1 – May 26. This is a very casual kind of QAL, where you can sew as fast or as slow as you like. If you’re like me and prefer to have a schedule to keep you on task, here’s what we’ll be doing:

Week 1 – choose fabrics (week ends Sunday, May 5th)
Week 2 – piece blocks (week ends Sunday, May 12th)
Week 3 – piece quilt top (week ends Sunday, May 19th)
Week 4 – quilt and bind (week ends Sunday, May 26th)

Share along the way on Instagram using #LibertyMiniQAL and #blossomheartquilts so that we can see what you’re up to! If you also tag us – @blossomheartquilts and @ava_and_neve – that makes it even easier for us to follow along. Please note – if your Instagram profile is private, we will not be able to see any of your posts through the hashtag or by you tagging us.

The important date to remember is to post your finished quilt by Sunday, May 26th with the hashtags, because that’s when we’ll be choosing one lucky winner to win a Liberty Society bundle and a paper copy of my other Little Liberties pattern, Entwined, that makes this beautiful pixellated heart quilt:

Making Cinque Terre Plans

First step is to decide what fabrics and colours to use for your Cinque Terre! You will need 9 prints at least 8″ x 11″ in size, and 1/4 yard of background fabric. Whatever fabric you use, it works best with a smaller scale of print to show off the fabric the best. You could go with a variety of fun and colourful prints that make you smile. I used the sunflower print in the middle as a starting point, and pulled other fun prints that made me smile and coordinated.

Or choose one feature print and pull colours from that like I did for my first Cinque Terre quilt. I chose one central feature print (Kayako C), and then pulled eight coordinating colours from it to use in the surrounding blocks.

Or perhaps you could do a rainbow version with slightly more tonal prints.

Or an ombre effect! Light to dark washing across the quilt…

If you want to buy some new Liberty for the quilt along, Martina has DIY Cinque Terre kits available in store now – choose your own bundle of Liberty fat sixteenths and get the pattern too for just $45! As you can only normally buy as small a cut as a fat eighth, this is a special offer for the QAL. Simply browse their extensive range of Liberty options, choose the 10 you love (just like you would get in the Liberty Society bundles) and make a note of what you’d like, then add the Cinque Terre kit to your cart and leave the list of prints in the comments section. I recommend then adding in a solid Liberty or a linen or chambray for your background fabric while you’re at it 😉

In regards to the background fabric, choose something that creates a little bit of contrast. Those four white squares are part of what makes the Cinque Terre design look the way it does. Also, what you choose for the background can be different from the binding fabric, in fact, the pattern lists them separately in the fabric requirements, but it does create a nice and seamless look to have the same fabric for both. I would encourage you to consider doing just that!

I will be using nine prints from the April Liberty Society bundle for my Cinque Terre quilt, along with a navy solid Liberty lawn, and I will be turning my it into a large cushion. The mini quilt finishes at 24″ x 24″, or 60cm x 60cm, which will make for a fabulously large cushion!

Side note: Before deciding this, I double checked pillow insert options – Ikea has 65cm inserts (polyester or duck filling) and Spotlight has 60cm or 65cm inserts (polyester filling), both of which would work well for this. Going up a size helps to really plump the cushion out and means that the inserts won’t lose their cushy-ness as quickly! I will even be adding a zipper enclosure, unlike my usual envelope closure, because that’s much more durable for what will probably end up (let’s be honest) as a floor cushion in my house.

For more inspiration, we have two fabulous official QALers joining in – Caitlin, Jane, and Ali from Arabesque Scissors. Be sure to check them out to see what they’re making!