Small Christmas makes - Fabric Wreath's and Dresden Cushions!

Our branch of the Irish Patchwork Society usually has a demo or two before our meeting officially starts and from time to time I make up a project with step outs to share with the group. In order to try and recruit new members some of us are also doing demonstrations in a local haberdashery shop in town, so I have been making Christmas cushions, table runners and fabric wreaths and step by step bits to show how to put them together!

Last year, it was all hexagons (trees and snowflakes); this year it’s all about the Dresden Plate! Hickeys allowed me to chose a fat quarter selection of 6 prints with a Scandinavian feel and some background fabric to make up a Dresden plate cushion for the demo.  The template is here if you want it and for this 18" finished cushion I used the 5" sized wedge.  If you haven't made a Dresden Plate block before, it is way easier than it looks and gives such nice impact it's perfect for Christmas makes!  Missouri Star Quilt has some great video tutorials on how to make Dresden blocks on their You Tube Channel here.

Using quilting cotton, for a cushion, requires a bit of wadding or fusible batting to give the cushion cover a bit of substance. So, I straight line quilted the front and back and appliqued the Dresden plate and centre circle on top of the quilted surface with just a straight line stitch.

I like a cushion with binding to frame the front sometimes, if the cushion colours are quite light, so I used double fold binding strips made from 2 1/2" wide x length and attached with a 3/8" seam on the back first,  then folded over to the front and machine sticthed in place.  Keeping it simple with a envelope backing, (see tutorial I wrote for the Modern Quilters Ireland Group here if you want to make one too!)

I really like how it turned out and the Scandi style colours are lovely to work with.  The Dresden block is so versatile, you can adapt it to anything really.  I used a red/green traditional colouring on a silver background for the table runner and had fun using up scraps for the 1/4 circles at the corners.
 

I left the binding open so I can show how to close it at the demo.  Wool wadding has given the Dresdens a lovely puffy feel!

Figuring they make nice cushions and Christmas makes don't have to be out of Christmas fabrics, I tried a summery version, with some fussy cut musical fabric too. 

I am liking this one a lot!

The Dresden plates don't take a lot of fabric, so using the fat quarters I made a Christmas wreath too!

During the Knitting & Stitching Show in Dublin, the South Eastern branch had a Christmas display and lots of people admired the fabric wreath hanging on the wall.  The lady who made it advised the invigilators to use a tube made from 5" to 6 1/2" x length of fabric, sew the strips together at the top, stuff with toy stuffing, plait and hide the join with a bow. 

So for our branch November meeting, we normally have just a demo night of Christmas makes. I thought I'd have a go at making a wreath or two, following these general instructions and I wrote up a step by step pattern that you can download here if you like!

 I tired the 5" and 6" widths using fat quarters and prefer the 5" ones over the 6" wreath shown here in the bottom photo.  Because I was using fat quarters I felt that when stuffed they made a circle easier.

I had fun playing with a ribbons, and a bow tie and much prefer the look of the fabric ties so it is worth making your own.  When looking for bow tie widths online I found this tutorial that shows how to make the wreath step by step with a fabric ribbon so maybe this was the post that started the whole thing!


I have to leave you with this photo of Maggie and Wilbur.  While I was busy making for Christmas they were busy dreaming!  Don't worry guys Santa is going to be good to you both!

WIP Wednesday - quilting the Christmas hexies!

I had to step away from the computer at the weekend and get back to finishing my Christmas Hexagon samples for the IPS meeting this Friday. I decided to put the white snowflake on a wintery grey background instead of the red I had originally chosen. At last Thursday's sewing night, this was the one everyone preferred. The plan is to place a chunky white candle in the upper right corner and use it for the centre of the table

Straight line down to a point and make a perpendicular line to the left and back to centre.  Then right and back to centre, 45 deg up to left corner and back to centre and then down to the bottom right and back to centre.  Same for the other side, up and down at an angle and finally straight down to the next point.

In keeping with the snowflake design I quilted it free motion with some asterisks that to me look like stars.  I really like how they came out against this Kona Steel background.  I glued the hexies in place with dots of basting glue and now have to stitch them in place and decide what colour to bind it in. I'm thinking of a white print or maybe a blue?

I just got the last few hexagons out the remnants of this blue fabric to finish this Star of David design. I really like the star made in the empty spaces and straight line quilted these guys through each hexie point as per the this tutorial on Modern Handcraft.  Thinking of binding this one in red!

I made a snowy Christmas tree and then thought about spacing it like the Modern Handcraft tutorial so made a second one!

I really do like this way of quilting them.  It is really fast and looks very effective!  No idea what colour to bind this one in!

When I saw this post by Little Penguin Quilts on using Hexies to make a boring cushion look trendy, I thought that would be cool to try on a plain beige/cream cover I have sitting in the clean laundry pile.  So I pulled some more traditional Christmas fabric (sorry I don't know the name - came as a layer cake bundle from the Limerick Quilt Centre!) and got this far with another Christmas tree.

I'm going to be giving these away at this stage I've got so many now!

Linking up to

A Finish - Modern Irish Quilters Swap

Today is the postal date for our Modern Quilters Ireland swap!  This year, we have been making Christmas cushions, for our assigned partner.  It's a secret swap and my partner doesn't know I am making for her but I hope she'll like this as much as I do.

I had great fun with this little project!  I was going to hand quilt it but then changed my mind.  I wanted swirly quilting in the white to suggest a bit of a snow storm and once I had that on, the hand quilting didn't feel right.  I put a bit in the blue star points but you can barely see it!

I also changed my mind on the backing fabric.

I was going to use the Folk Art Holiday fabric but then thought it would be better used to bind the cushion and frame the star, so I dug into my Ikea 2014 Christmas print.  I have a few yards of this home decoration weight cotton to make into a table cloth.  I really like it as the backing!

The Folk Art fabric worked really well then for binding front and back.  I used two 2.5" strips x width of fabric and a 3/8" seam to have it even both sides of the cushion.  Clover wonder clips held everything in place (love them!!!) and then zig-zagged it all down!

The star burst was quilted in straight lines using a walking foot and the star and ray were quilted in the ditch too to make them stand up a bit from the background.

Lastly, to accompany the cushion, we were to make a small Christmas tree decoration.  Mine was made of scraps from Joy by Kate Spain as was the red in the cushion above.

So all done and another tick off the Christmas list - getting there!  Just have to put up our tree today now so I can hang my decoration from last years swap!  Love this little touch and hope it will be a yearly tradition!

Mum saw this finished yesterday and given her track record of swiping cushions,  I had to tell her hands off it's spoken for!  So this is going in the post today - hope you like it partner!

Linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts and

Christmas Stocking Challenge

Finished ahead of deadline!  Our branch of the Irish Patchwork Society issued us a challenge to make a Christmas stocking, or a Wine Bottle cover, for our meeting this Friday.  Thinking a stocking would be more fun to make, I pulled out my Folk Art Holiday fabric, I bought from Fluffy Sheep Quilting, and some Kona white and flicked through lots of magazines to get some ideas. 

I found some images in card magazines belonged to mum and traced the outline onto some parchment paper to transfer to the fabric.  Rudolph is from Crafts Beautiful 2013 and in this month's Simply Homemade I found these three snowmen.  I gave them bodies and some snowflakes and a song to sing.  They are singing the song about Santa asking Rudolph to guide his sleigh and Rudolph proud as punch to be lead reindeer for the night!

If I was to make this again I'd not have this section so square.  Rounded to suit the shape of the stocking would be better I think.   I also had a problem with limescale build up on my iron and it made a yellowish mark on my crisp white fabric.  And I have blue chalk lines still showing, difficult enough to remove without washing!  A fun project though and I really had fun with the embroidery.

I managed to get it all sewn together as a stocking on Sunday afternoon when the light was quite dark and foggy so I had to wait for this morning to get some natural light photos.  I thought about staging it on Wilbur's kennel but Wilbur wasn't having any of this.  He was in his uncooperative, I'm going to jump at your head until you pay me attention mood.  Even Bonio treats weren't working today. 

Wilbur getting ready to jump!

For the back, I used the same print in the white colorway and a sparkly dot white fabric for the cuff.   So that's one ticked off the Christmas list at least, lots to do yet on the others!  Looking forward to Friday evening, when we get to have a party, eat the sweet and savoury dishes people have brought and get to see what everyone else has done!

 Linking up to Finish it Friday and

Murphy's Law meets Night Sky QAL

I've been making progress on my Night Sky Quilt this week.  Not a lot of progress it has to be said, but still some!

Jana @ Jana Machado has organised a Quilt-A-Long using Camille Roskelly's pattern Night Sky.  Today is link up day over on her blog and I am pleased to say I have one block made.  Yup, just the one!

The rest are like a giant jigsaw puzzle in pieces up on the design wall!

I'm making a small version of this quilt 48" x 56" from my on hand Christmas fabrics.  Mine is a scrappy version made up of a left over Layer Cake of Joy by Kate Spain, Riley Blake's Santa's Little Helpers and a smattering of Folk Art holiday.

I've added in Kona Snow, Ash and Navy in an attempt to pull the scrappiness together, very similar to the palette in the original pattern made with Bonnie & Camille's new line of fabric, Daysail.

Not using fat quarters, I started with cutting up all the pieces I would need, working out how many of each block and what colours I wanted, whiled away the whole afternoon last Sunday. 

I thought I had everything nice and orderly, then realised the aqua solids I had sewn into my centre 4 patches, were meant to be star points!  I am very good friends with my seam ripper (have 4 of them!)

 So I ripped and laid them out again this time by block!  Much better.

Then got to chain piecing.  All was going fine until I ran out of bobbin thread.  I didn't notice until the last one went through- doh!  

So I wound a new bobbin, decided to be very good and give the machine a clean while I was at it and tried again.

Yup made a hames (Irish term for a right royal mess!) of threading my machine and chain pieced them all like this!  More ripping and redoing.  I didn't swear once, I might have sighed a lot though!  I eventually got this one lone navy block sewn together.

As I was working from layer cakes one of my big blocks is made up of 2 colours of the same print.  I quite like it though it is a bit crazy looking!

I'm loving the large 16" blocks in this pattern.  This red block is my favourite so far.  I really like the red white and aqua colour scheme too.  Must think about that for another project!

So, worrying I wouldn't have much to show you today for Jana's blog hop, only 1 poor solitary star block pieced together, I cleared the design wall and started laying out.  This was tons of fun!  It really is like playing with a big jigsaw!  And look,  I have one piece in the large aqua block, second row, laid out backwards! 

Quite a bit left to do but it's coming together, despite Murphy's what can go wrong will go wrong influence.  Row 3 and 5 will be very similar to row 1, so a really scrappy Christmas looking quilt I hope, in the end.  Eventually!

Linking up to Jana today.  Please head on over there for more of the blog hop and to see her fabulous blocks.  So far Jana has managed to make unique blocks, no two the same!  Some people even have a finished quilt top!  No pressure then, it's not like I have a deadline or anything!   34 more days, plenty of time don't you think?