I am, in the big scheme of things, quite obsessed with small things.

It’s funny, I must be in my second childhood, as I was always very keen on miniature stuff when I was little.

I have just made a second set of pocket bears, ready for the Secret Garden Craft Fair on June 18th.

They are quite small. Just a few inches tall.

And I have perfected my itty bitty kitties, including black ones, and turned some of them into stickpins.

They are smaller still….

And a mini koala, with an even mini-er baby in it’s pouch…

Of course, there are plenty of people who make amazingly tiny things, much smaller than I would even contemplate trying with my arthritic fingers and blurry eyesight.  Check out this website and you’ll see what I mean.

But one issue I have run up against whilst making small things is that most of my fabrics aren’t up to the job of downsizing.

I love big patterns, but they’re not fit for purpose when you are making something really small. There’s just no room for a six inch flower on a two-inch kitty…

So I have been seeking out some vintage petite patterns suitable for mini makes.

They are not as common as you might think… the 1960s and 70s were pretty darned bold in their design choices, which of course is a lot to do with why I love them. Apart from the odd ditsy print or Laura Ashley’s mini-florals, scaling patterns down to nano-size just wasn’t on their agenda, man.

So I have been forced to look further afield when ferreting out fabrics.

Liberty has always done ditsy. So off I hopped online, seeking out scraps. I found some and sat back to await their arrival. Which took a while.

The size of the envelope, when it did reach me, puzzled me a bit. Had they forgotten to actually include my order – fifty pieces of fabric?

Turns out I had committed the cardinal sin of getting a bit overexcited and not reading the description carefully enough. Yes, go on, tut. And shake your head too. I deserve both.

My scraps are tiddly-tiny. Some are just half-an-inch by two inches.

Too small for most things. Even a pocket bear takes about six-inches square of fabric.

But despite their diminutive size, the fabrics are so beautiful that I can’t be disappointed…

It’s funny, whilst writing this post a programme came on the radio about even tinier things… microscopic bacteria and suchlike.

My dad was a microscopist. So perhaps the obsession with tiny things runs in the family.

I’ve already found a use for some of my skinny scraps. I’ll show you tomorrow.

So it turns out there’s nothing too tiny, really.

You just have to enlarge your imagination. ♥