A couple of months ago, Mary Fons asked if I would like to work with her new collection, Small Wonders.  Of course, I said yes!  Mary has designed prints representing a number of countries: the Netherlands, South America, France, India, China, and the USA.   I received a stack of the “World Piece” France collection.  Mary’s goal was to create collections of small scale prints perfect for cutting into small pieces for patchwork.  You can read more about that here.

The prints really are perfect for just that. I love the Eiffel Tower print the most so I decided to focus on it for the front of a pillow cover.  I thought I could paper piece an Eiffel Tower and fortunately, Sewhooked already had designed such a pattern which saved me some time!  You can buy the pattern here.  The two prints I used for the block were just perfect for paper piecing–not particularly directional and seam lines just blend away.

I cut 2 1/2″ squares from the rest of the collection to make a patchwork pillow back.  As you can see, the print with a trio of crown, coat of arms and fleur de lis is the perfect 2 1/2″ square fussy cut.  The Eiffel Tower print could have been cut that way too but I didn’t have quite as much material to waste since I used it on the front as well.

I think you will find that Mary achieved her goal of making patchwork friendly small scale prints!  I look forward to seeing some of the other prints in the other groups in person.  I think a number of them will be great for paper pieced backgrounds–something I am always on the lookout for.  The red and white ditsy print above is one of those!

Thank you Mary for letting me play with this collection!