Christmas Stitching

Here are some Christmas presents I made last month. The quality of these photos proves that you really can have too much sunlight in your pictures!

They are not very big. The rectangular ones are about 8" by 4".

The square ones are about 4 or 5 inches square.

They are from a pattern by Bareroots. Small and easy to whip up. I love the detail and quality of Bareroots patterns.

I attached narrow green ribbon when sewing them together to make a hanger. They could be used as tree ornaments or (especially the larger ones) door knob hangers.

Grandmother's Flower Garden

Ever since I finished hand-piecing my tumbling blocks quilt, I have felt the need for a hand-sewing project. I've managed to keep myself busy on long car trips with some embroidery projects, and other small things, but I needed something else. SisterStitches has done quite a bit of English Paper Piecing, and recommended it to me, so I finally decided to try my hand at it.

First I bought a package of hexagon papers (actually, they're card stock). I chose to use 1 1/4" hexagons. That is the measurement of one of the sides, not the width of the whole piece.

I think it was SisterStitches who suggested that I make a plastic template to cut out my fabric pieces. I started with one that was 1/4" larger than my paper template, to allow for the fabric that gets folded over the edge. Then I decided to give myself a little more fabric, and made a second template that added 3/8". I like that size much better.

Here you can see that I've traced my shapes onto the fabric. (Note: it's best to iron your fabric at some point!) Having that template really made this part easy.

This photo shows seven hexagons which have had the fabric basted to the paper pieces. (Yes, I know I'm switching fabrics on you with these pictures; please excuse me!) They are now ready to be sewn together into a "flower."

The back side of one "flower" all sewn together. . .

. . . and the front side of that same flower.

# # #

And that brings me to show you this beautiful quilt. My GrandmaStitches made this for a wedding present for MisterStitches and myself. That was 35 years ago. Hand pieced and hand quilted, of course. I dug it out of the cedar chest to admire it, and then felt bad for keeping it put away like that.

So now it lives on our sofa, and we use it to cover up with while we're watching a movie in the evening.

A beautiful quilt like this should be kept out and admired, don't you think?

I think I can almost remember some of these fabrics as Grandma's dresses.

Mystery Quilt Part I

McCalls Quilting magazine recently had an article which explained a three-part mystery quilt they are publishing. Some of my quilting buddies and I decided to make this mystery quilt. I opted (as did some of the others) to make a Quilt of Valor, so I chose some red, white, and blue fabrics. I really would have liked to use up some of my fabric stash, but didn't have anything appropriate, so I went shopping at one of my favorite quilt shops, The Loft.

Here are the fabrics I chose.

For the first part of the mystery, I made two different blocks. One a simple quarter square triangle, and the other a similar block with only three pieces. Of course, the directions had me cut the binding fabric first. Here are my completed blocks so far.

I'll keep you updated on my progress here. This magazine only comes every other month, so I don't feel too much pressure! Even I should be able to complete the assigned blocks in a two-month period, right!?!

New Sewing Knobs For Cabinet

It was actually quite a while ago that I came across this website for "creative" drawer pulls.

I have two cabinets right near my seeing machine, one with five drawers in it, and one with three.

Now I have such cute drawer pulls! And they somewhat identify what is inside the drawers. So I spend a little less time opening drawer after drawer till I find the right one. I know, you'd think I'd have the drawer contents memorized by now!

Very Scrappy Quilt

Sometimes people criticize quilters for cutting large pieces of fabric into smaller pieces, then sewing those small pieces into a larger piece to make a quilt. We quilters all know that's just plain nonsense! But I have a project that used already small pieces of fabric scraps to make a quilt. The idea came from Elizabeth at www.ohfransson.com. She made a large floor pillow with this technique; I made a small-ish quilt. It can really be made in any size you wish.

Here is a photo of the finished quilt top.

Now I will show you how I got there!

I used my blue scraps for this quilt. I didn't sort them at all, or care if the blues went together or not. The above photo shows my little fabric bowl full of blue scraps sitting next to my sewing machine. Next to the fabric scraps is a pile of one-inch strips of off-white fabric. This fabric is leftovers from a sheet that I had re-purposed into a comforter cover.

This photo shows my first two pieces of blue fabric with a strip of off-white between them. This is the basic step for the whole project.

I sewed the 1" strip to one piece of blue, then pressed toward the blue. The 1" strips were all approximately 20" long, so they simply got trimmed down to the size I needed when I sewed them to the blue pieces.

Here is the first set of fabric sewn together and pressed.

Next I laid them on the cutting mat and trimmed one side to a straight edge. As you can see, I angled my cut, which adds to the fun and scrappiness of this quilt.

Now we're missing a couple photos, but the next step was to sew a 1" strip to my straight edge. Then I made another set of two (or maybe three) fabrics, made a straight edge, and sewed it to the first set I'd sewn. Get it?

And here is a finished block. You may notice that the block itself is not square either, but has a slanted edge on the bottom. That's ok! It will all work out in the end! Also, I have no idea exactly how big this square is. I just kept sewing fabric pieces until it looked about right. Really, this project is so forgiving! Which also makes it very liberating. Just grab a piece of fabric and sew it to the next one! It's so much fun.

Here's a close-up of one of the blocks. I particularly liked this fairy fabric. I remember it from quite a few projects ago!

And here's another shot of the finished quilt top. Now I just need to add borders and finish it up. If you look closely, you can see that the blocks and rows are not square and do not line up exactly. I used the same one-inch strips to join three blocks together into a row, then evened up the bottom and top edges. Another one-inch strip joined the rows into a whole quilt top. You may notice that the rows and columns are not parallel or even with each other. But it doesn't matter: it all gets trimmed square in the end.

Christmas Decorations

OK, here's a super easy Christmas decoration. Simply tie some beautiful ribbon around the dining room chairs! It doesn't get much easier than that. It helps that my chairs have ultra suede fabric on them to help hold the ribbons in place, but a little well-placed scotch tape could do the trick, too.

I think it was in October when I was in Costco and they had their Christmas decorations and wrapping paper out. They have such nice paper (in a much bigger roll than I'll ever use up!) and really pretty ribbon. The ribbon comes in a 50-yard roll, which usually lasts me several years! This year I used up more of it, but as I usually re-use my ribbon, I'm sure I'll still have lots left over.

I had a plaid woolen skirt that I wasn't wearing any more, so one day I washed it in hot water and dried it on high heat to felt the wool. Now I've finally gotten around to doing something with it! I cut mitten shapes out of the wool, then did a decorative stitch around the edges in red. All that remained to do was clothes pin them onto a ribbon.

I have eight regular-sized mittens, and one small mitten. This decoration was slightly more work than the one above, but not very much bother, either!

Free Motion Quilting Class

I recently took a free motion quilting class at my local quilt guild. It was taught by Bonnie Toy, a very experienced quilter. She has some awesome ideas, and is a good teacher. Bonnie has a wonderful way of getting things across to her students.

Now, if you don't laugh too much, I'll show you some of my attempts in her quilting class. I've done some free motion quilting, but am nowhere near adept at it, and I always need more practice. I take every class I can find, as I always learn something new.

This first example is just a little elongated, three-loop figure eight, then three loopy loops around it. It's quite easy to move around the quilt top with this design.

My second example is a curved loop, but then it is "echoed" in a square manner, rather than with loopy round lines.

One of my favorite designs, and totally new to me, is this one that looks like intersecting circles. It requires drawing a grid onto the fabric, then snaking curves up and down the lines. The result looks like circles. It's awesome, and I am so glad I discovered this design. I now need to acquire the necessary grid, and my local quilt shop has some ordered, so I'll have one soon.

This design--or one similar to it--is know as bananas. However, I didn't make mine quite like everyone else did. But I'm pretty happy with the outcome. Just some random curves.

The above examples are all on one piece of fabric. You can see that the fabric is a very colorful batik print. One day I will do more practice quilting on this fabric and will have a set of placemats!