Christmas in July finish! (photo heavy)



Well, I'm pretty happy with myself, I just completed a project that satisfied my yearning for Christmas fabric, that need to make a Christmas something, and allowed me to practice my quilting.  I found a blog that hosted a Christmas in July hop which focused on small projects that can easily be finished before Christmas.  And on top of that they're offering a giveaway for making one of the projects!  I was immediately drawn to the first project they showed, which is a wreath wall hanging and also their button for the hop:

 

 

 

After I read thru the instructions a couple times I convinced myself I needed to use the Solstice mini charm pack, so I went to Stash and bought one.  And what were the odds, they were having a sale!  If I was really wise, I'd have bought two... oh well!  The tutorial mentions using some extra fabric for the grey and red borders, and I thought oh I should be fine, I have red and grey in my stash.  As you will see, they were not the right colors, so I improvised!  Also, as I was assembling the top I came to the conclusion that since I already have a Christmas wall hanging, that this would make a fabulous pillow sham.  So that's what I did, and here's how mine was done differently than their tutorial:

 

Making my wreath have a rounded look, I chose to not take one of the greens to sacrifice for use on the inside corners, instead I figured I could use the little triangles from these outside corners

And I did!  Wasn't the easiest thing in the world, but I made it happen.





The center created!



Had to do the magic twist of course :)  By the way, if I ever make this again, I will press the seams all towards the green (or possibly open) for stitching-in-the-ditch purposes.

Here I was figuring out how I wanted to balance my reds and greys.  The off-white has a gold sparkle on it that is really subtle but ended up matching what I chose for the backing really well.

And here it is assembled.  At the time of adding the off-white border I decided to square it up, which unfortunately brought the dimensions down to 1 3/4" instead of 2", which normally wouldn't be a problem, except that the outside border is a bunch of mini charms... so I had to fudge a little here and there.  My husband pointed out that unless you're looking for it, people probably won't notice.

To make the bow I cut out the only fusible interfacing I had and auditioned the size and placement.

Then fused it to the back of the red.

And sewed it on.  And took it off.  4 times.  Turns out I didn't know what I was doing in this case, and after a lot of trial and error that included trying to hand embroider these pieces on I figured out I needed to add some of the interfacing to the back of the top.  What was happening was the fabric was bunching up like crazy as I tried to go around the bottom of the ribbon pieces and was causing really bad puckering.

But this helped a lot!  Again, if I do this project again, I will use my normal method of applique and do the whole turn inside-out after sewing the interfacing to the fabric then iron it to the top, and sew around the edge with a straight stitch.  Lesson learned!

Top complete and ready to baste and quilt.

I follow Lori Kennedy at The Inbox Jaunt for my free motion quilting practice, which is what is up on my computer in the background.  My Bernina and I are working on becoming friends again.  Mostly I find she likes Aurifil thread as long as it's in the bobbin as well as is the top thread, I never had any problems with breakage in this whole project.  Probably helps that I also had the tension under control.

A snowflake centerpiece.  I found while doing this that I really need the lines to follow or I end up all over the place, my hands have a greater tendency to lose control of the fabric and my stitches get all out of control.  It seems so weird, but then I remind myself, that's why they make stencils!

 

Here's how the quilting started out, I was so happy how well it made the wreath puff out!  It helped too that I used 1/2" batting.  I have heard people say that they think stippling is so overused, but I must tell you how super proud I am of myself for doing this stipple, as I said above I am not so good at not following lines, and this was all done without them!  And John was super impressed with me as well, which is always nice.

And from the front.

Quilting complete!

I made this as big as I could so you can see the quilting.  I used Lori's tutorial on for the holly leaves, and made up the corners which is snowflake inspired (John's idea).  I also went back and outlined the inside of the wreath as well as the outside of the off-white border.  It often amazes me how big a difference such a simple outline can make.

And complete!  All I did was add the backing pieces to make a pillow sham, although I did have to piece together my backing pieces to make it work.

The inside seam brought the sham down to about 14.5" x 14.5", so fit my 14" pillow form just right!

 

The only thing I'm contemplating is adding a couple snap buttons to the back to help hold the overlap in place, as I discovered that 2 inches of overlap is NOT enough, you definitely want at least 5 inches.  At least, if you ever plan on anyone seeing the back.  Or if you want the pillow to stay inside the sham.  :)

So I hope you're inspired to get ahead on your Christmas projects as well, I am off to work on that wedding quilt for the wedding that happened over a month ago now... no more procrastinating for the rest of the year!  AHAHAHAHAHA, right.

 

Have a great day!

~Brandy

Christmas in July is happening for me!

I am so excited because I have just made myself a promise that I will allow myself to work on Christmas projects the next two weeks!  I adore Christmas fabric, and have some set aside for a bed runner that is inspired by this:

 

 

I love how the faces have so much personality!

 

I have been working on a couple other projects as well, actually have a finish too!  I had seen the video from Missouri Star Quilt Co about making a dresden plate block with their tumbler, and as I have the mini tumbler I decided I needed to know how big a block would be when you make it.  9.5 inches is the answer!

 

Turns out the tumbler dresden only needs 16 pieces, so I left a couple out.

Inside look at the dresden making process :)

Yup, ~9.5 inches

My personal favorite piece

Here is the finished product!  I for some unknown reason, ending up closing the binding on the front.  That was not the plan... But it still looks good!

I used this as an opportunity to practice FMQ on my Bernina 750 QE, and I feel pretty good about it!  And I did the overlapping fabric as the backing, so technically this is a pillow sham and will be going to my cousin in Portland as soon as they get moved back into their house (her room caught on fire, fortunately everyone is fine including Butch, her cat).
 

Picked up some Timeless Treasures fabric from Craft Warehouse (until that day I was unaware CW even carried fabric, and not only that but MODA fabric!)

Actually didn't follow a pattern, read somewhere that this table runner uses equilateral triangles for the end pieces and figured it out for myself!  It wasn't difficult for me, but math/angle type things are not difficult for me, so there you go.  I plan on a post that is focused on this runner, and I definitely want to pick up some Christmas themed striped fabric now!  I will say, one of these times I'm going to remember to actually measure my pieces and think it thru a little in regards to my backing, I ended up ~2 inches short of having the right length of backing fabric.  Not a huge deal, I pieced 2 pieces of it together, but you know, sometimes it's nice to have a solid backing.

And this beaut is actually a 3 week late wedding present!  Hopefully my friend isn't reading my blog, but if so, surprise!  hahaha, I'm so excited to get this done, I just cut out the fabric for the border (a deep blue with the red as cornerstones) and will finish getting those on this week for sure, then take it to my mom's place to baste it all together.  John helped me choose a sandy colored flannel backing.  I am going to quilt it on my Bernina and am thinking a large feather-type pattern will look nice.

 

Other things on my holiday list include:

 

*Hunter's star for dad

*Scrappy four patch for sister

*Strawberry quilt for John and me

*finishing my lap blanket for work (needs batting and sewn up, should be easy enough...)

*make myself new sweatpants

 

Oh!  And I made a super fun cupcake bouquet the other day, and got paid for it!  Always a fun perk :)

 

Have a wonderful day!

~Brandy

 

Matching points and Y-seams: Assembling my picnic quilt

So sorry for the wait!  What's with this summer cold-thing going around, sheesh.
Anywho, here's some of the steps I took to make assembling my quilt easier:

This quilt was full of many firsts for me, as I mentioned in my Perfect Picnic post, and I'm very happy to share with you what I learned.

 

I made my star points scrappy for this quilt, in the future I probably will not undertake such a challenge as it is so much easier to make strips of the colors and cut them out from there, here's a really good video from Kaye's Quilts on youtube, she explains in the introduction:  Easy Double Wedding Ring

 

 

However, the way I chose to make this one was scrappy, and so I laid the pieces out in pattern pleasing to my eye, then stacked all the rows the same, starting from the outermost point and going to the right, stacking one on top of the other.  As you can see in the picture above, I made sure to take a picture of my layout when I got it where I liked in so that when I dropped a pile of pieces, and I numbered the points, then numbered my stacks to correspond to the points in the picture.

 

 

I made sure to keep them numbered as I sewed them together point by point, I was really paranoid that I would get them mixed up.

 

So my trick for getting matching points on my star is pretty easy to do, and I only wish I'd done it before I'd had to take out one of the seams about 8 times, HOWEVER, it is now engrained in me that this is the best way to do it (sorry, started complaining there, naughty naughty :P )

 

1. Make a mark 1/4 inch from the edge of the fabric (not diagonally along the seam!) on both pieces that you are sewing together, I actually went to each intersecting seam and drew my lines with my disappearing ink pen from Joann Fabrics.

2. Next take a pin and place it exactly through both pieces where the drawn line intersects with the seam, and keep it pointing straight through.

 

3.  LEAVING THE FIRST PIN STRAIGHT UP AND DOWN add two pins that cross each other and hold the fabric in place where the first pin was marking them, then you may remove that pin.  The pictures below show how my points turned out by using this method.



I know the bottom blue looks off point, I just hadn't ironed it flat yet, not entirely sure why I went ahead and took this picture...

 

See, that's better!  By the way, I was ironing my seams all down, and ended up re-ironing them when I attached the points together, so if you have to do so it's no big deal.

 

I followed the same matching procedure to sew the points together, and sewed point 1 to 2, 3 to 4, etc, then the 1-2 points to the 3-4 points and 5-6 to 7-8 to form the half stars.  I sewed the seams from the blues to the reds in the very center, I'm not sure if that's part of why my piece turned out perfectly flat, but it may be one reason.

This is one of the few times I ever sew a seam open, but I did so at the seam between points 2 & 3 and points 6 & 7 to help reduce the bulk at the very center.  Then I very carefully lined up the center reds of the two halves, and actually sewed from the center out on these seams, overlapping my stitches about an inch across the center.  Still used the pins to match the points on here as well.

 

You can see how nice and flat it turned out.  I actually was not aware that it could end up domed in the center, but apparently it can.  I'm guessing that as long as you keep your seams accurate (preferably 1/4 inch) and take your time then you should end up with a flat star.  I found out yesterday while talking to the lady at Highland Quilts in Athena, OR that if you do get a dome in the center, you can take a very hot steam iron and set the iron on the fabric, and the heat/water will shrink your cotton enough to make it lay flat!  She did also say it's a slow process, not to rush it, it will also distort your fabric if you are pushing it around a lot.

So when it comes to the corners and setting triangles let me give you my favorite lesson I learned from when I made my mom's quilt for Christmas:  make them at least 1" larger than you think the measurement should be!  On my mom's quilt I went with the exact calculated measurement (and only so much fabric to work with) and ended up having to stretch it into place and force it to work, which is not conducive to a relaxing quilting experience.  On this piece I added the extra inch, having convinced myself it would be okay to lose some extra fabric, and I was so glad I did.  Strangely I didn't trim that much extra off!  I had plenty of space to cut along and still leave the 1/4 inch allowance for sewing on my inner border, which was something I'd missed on my mom's quilt.

 

There are a lot of great tutorials for Y-seams (here is a great video: http://www.jinnybeyer.com/quilting-with-jinny/tips-lessons/detail.cfm?instanceId=71DAA699-0AFE-8A90-85D38BA999BD18D8), my biggest suggestion is be sure to mark your 1/4" from the corners and pin, just like with matching your points on the star.  Then start from the center and work your way to the outside edge.  Also, none of your stitches should overlap at that starting point, that will cause a pucker of fabric.

 

I hope you found some of my insights enlightening, please leave me a comment if you have any questions or if you have other tips, I always love to hear other tricks of the trade!

 

~Brandy