It has been crazy at my house today! But I did promise to share news on the miniature I'm making. Truly, I don't know that this qualifies as "miniature" – it's more like a really small quilt. What you see here are the pieced backgrounds.

Our new book, Applique Outside the Lines, is all about not using a ruler and a more casual approach to applique placement. I made even these small backgrounds the way we describe it in the book. This sort of background has a distinctive, happy, mid-century modern attitude.

As you can see, I've begun appliqueing the first block…