My March 2021 One Monthly Goal was to make a mini Harry Potter quilt for a colleague at work named Tasia who loves all things Harry Potter. We agreed to do a trade where Tasia helped me with some strength training twice a week in February and March in exchange for the mini quilt. Tasia gave me free rein in the design. I found a great free-of-charge paper-pieced pattern at Fandom in Stitches of the wizard, Albus Dumbledore. (If you go into the link, it is the third image on the top row—Professor Dumbledore with Wizard’s Hat by Connie Tessier). He is one of Tasia’s favorite Harry Potter characters, and she has even named her cat, Albus. The size of the one I chose is 5” square which was smaller than I wanted for my mini quilt, so I enlarged it a bit on a copier. The nine sections weren’t separated, so I made 9 copies (and a few extra for good measure), so I could cut out each section to paper piece and then added a 1/4” seam allowance when I was trimming the sections. I would definitely say this pattern is NOT for a paper-piecing novice! The enlarged Dumbledore block finished at  7” square. 

I liked the fabric choices made by Connie Tessier in her pattern, so I chose similar fabrics from my stash. The purple is Zoltar by Libs Elliott from her Tattoed collection. The blue fabric in Dumbledore’s robe is from a 2011 Kona Bay Fabrics collection called MOVE-01. The background is a dark grey grunge fabric. The flesh colored fabric is Moda Bella Parchment. I looked online for a white fabric with grey streaks for the hair, mustache, and beard but could not find any fabric I liked. So I decided to streak my own. I ordered some Grey Mist Fabric Ink on Amazon. With a Q-tip soaked in water, I painted streaks on some Kona white fabric, and hung it up to dry. 

I then added three borders to make it 17” square. The inner most border is the dark grey grunge background fabric. The second border is a favorite Libs Elliott fabric, Moon Age in Cerise, and the outer border is Camelot Deathly Hallows Symbol Silver on Black from the Etsy shop Angelfabric. The binding fabric is Kona Purple.

The fabric for the back of the quilt is called The Boy Who Lived Harry Potter, and I found it at the Etsy shop, FandomFabric.

I quilted it simply with Aurafil 50-weight Stainless Steel 2620 first outlining Dumbledore and echoing the shape of his Wizard hat with 1/2” mostly straight lines. 

After quilting, I trimmed it to 16.5” square, attached the purple binding (and the 3 3/4” label and two 3 3/4” hanging corners) by machine to the front of the quilt, and hand-stitched the binding to the back of the quilt.

I borrowed the Harry Potter softie below from Tasia to photograph with the mini quilt and the two Harry Potter books pictured at the top of the post from another colleague at work, Raquel, who also loves Harry Potter.

Tasia was very pleased with the mini quilt, and it is hanging in her office at work. It is fun to see it when I go into her office.

Linking up to Elm Street Quilts: March 2021 One Monthly Goal Finishes. I’m also linking up with Meadow Mist Designs: Favorite Finish Monthly Linkup—March 2021.