Delectable Mountains - Paper Pieced Miniature Quilt - Four Free Patterns and a Tutorial

A little bit of heaven on earth: My dog Pip, a pretty quilt, a good book, and a hot cup of tea.

The name for the Delectable Mountains quilt block comes from John Bunyan's Book "The Pilgrim's Progress".  This book was a bestseller for two centuries!  Traditional quilt blocks are wonderful and often have fascinating histories behind them.  Check out this article, written by Judy Anne Breneman, if you would like to learn a little more about The Delectable Mountains Pattern and Its History.  There are some terrific quilt layout ideas here and a free pattern too.  

I've always loved Bonnie Hunter's Scrappy Mountain Majesties and I wanted to try to make one in miniature.  She created them using the Delectable Mountains quilt block.  Bonnie's clear and easy-to-understand instructions work perfectly for making full sized quilts.
  
Have you ever made a quilt in miniature?  Some people make astonishingly tiny quilts and do them so beautifully.  In my experience, (vast as it is... not!)  I have found that when working in miniature, the smallest errors in piecing are comparable to large ones in a full size quilt.  I needed a way to increase the precision of my miniature piecing.  So I figured out how to make Scrappy Mountain Majesties with paper piecing.  Since my mountains are so small, I named my quilt "Scrappy Foothill Majesties".

First, I designed shorter blocks with six peaks, to use as a miniature border around a lovely cross stitch piece that I had purchased, which, as France Nadeau taught me, is called an abecedary.  Then I designed a more traditional block with eight peaks, to make a miniature quilt.

 

Paper Pieced Delectable Mountains Blocks in a Border & Quilt

You can have a lot of fun with the Delectable Mountains.  It is a lovely and very versatile quilt block:

• It works beautifully as the only block in a quilt and by rearranging it, you can create interesting patterns.
• It makes a very nice way to frame or highlight other quilt blocks.
• It is the perfect block to make into a mini border. The pieces fit together in a way that reminds me of an Adirondack style twig frame.

Below are just a few examples of how a mini quilt could be laid out.  Each of these represents a 12” Square mini quilt that can be made with eighteen of the 2" x 4" Delectable Mountains paper pieced blocks.  I used thirty-two of these blocks for my quilt Scrappy Foothill Majesties.

Here is an example of what I mean about using Delectable Mountains to frame another quilt block:

Just in case any of you would like to add a miniature Delectable Mountains quilt to your bucket list, I'm sharing the pattern here on BuzzinBumble, along with a tutorial for those who would like to see full instructions. Altogether, there are 4 main patterns, but I have also included versions of them with reversed placement of the light and dark fabrics.  Here are mock ups of each of the four blocks and their finished sizes.

The four types of paper pieced Delectable Mountain blocks.

If you would like to have a copy of these patterns or the tutorial,  

Click these links for a downloadable PDF file:

Miniature Delectable Mountains Paper Piecing Tutorial

PDF copies of the miniature Delectable Mountains quilt block patterns 
(Please note that there are multiple copies of each pattern on each page):

2” x 4” PP Delectable Mountains
2” x 4” PP Delectable Mountains - reversed colors

2” sq Corner Block PP Delectable Mountains

2” sq Corner Block PP Delectable Mountains - reversed colors

1½” x 3” PP Delectable Mountains
1½” x 3” PP Delectable Mountains - reversed colors

1½” sq Corner Block PP Delectable Mountains
1½” sq Corner Block PP Delectable Mountains - reversed colors

Two Sided Pattern Printing Instructions:

To get accurately scaled patterns: Save the pattern and then click on the printer icon.  Set up the page in portrait setting and select the “actual size” option, then print it out on lightweight paper. (Yup, I finally got the PDF file issue figured out.  Every step of every process I tried changed the final pattern sizes and it about drove me insane.  Now just you hush up about that being a short drive, LOL.)  But I digress...

It isn't often with paper piecing patterns that you have the opportunity to make a two sided pattern.  Since all of these pattern pages are symmetrical, you can print out the pattern on both sides of the paper.  With our printer, I just lift the page out without flipping it over to the other side, turn it 180 degrees (or end for end) and send it through the printer a second time.  This yields paper piecing patterns with the print exactly the same on both sides.  If you have paper pieced before, you know that this helps tremendously when lining up the fabrics and sewing them in place, because you can see all the lines you need on both sides.  No need to hold these patterns up to the light or hand mark lines.  

Terms of Use:

You are welcome to use these files for your own personal use or to make an item you wish to sell or give as a gift.  If you know someone who would like this pattern, please send them here for a free copy!   

If you like this tutorial and patterns, I would love it if you share the link to them on your blog or on social media websites.  I would also get a huge kick out of seeing photos of your own creations!  If you let me know about it, I will put a link here on my blog to your post so others can see what you made too!  
Wherever you share or post about them, I ask you to kindly mention where you found the pattern: BuzzinBumble.com   

Scrappy Foothill Majesties - Miniature paper pieced Delectable Mountains quilt

I just had to add one last picture of my sweet Pip. In this photo you can also see how I chose to quilt this quilt - by stitching diagonally just under the sawtooths of the mountain peaks.  I'm not sure if that was a good choice or not, because it kind of makes the mountains look like they were made with HSTs, which is one way the Delectable Mountains type blocks are sometimes pieced.  

I'd love to hear what you think.  Thanks for visiting!
Lara

PS - Did you notice what Pip was "reading"?  

Linking up to Connie's Linky Tuesday at Free Motion By the River!

Linking up to Lorna's Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts!
Linking up to Kelly's Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation!
Linking up to Sarah's Whoop Whoop Friday at Confessions of a Fabric Addict!
Linking up to Cynthia's Oh Scrap! at Quilting is More Fun Than Housework!