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!

Christmas Table Runner Swap Received!

Look what I got in the post!

Sarah at Fairy Face Designs made this as part of the Modern Irish Quilt Guild swap.  I absolutely love it and am so lucky to have Sarah as a swap partner.  She put the penguin in the middle just for me!  And Happy Feet is on again this Christmas - how could you resist singing and dancing penguins? 

As part of the swap we had to make a Christmas Tree decoration.  It is perfect for my tree!  Sarah did all this while recovering from surgery and still finished on time.  I just about finished mine on time and had no excuses!  Hats off to you, Sarah , all your hard work is much appreciated!  Thank you!

A Friday Finish - Christmas Table Runner & Binding Odd Angles

Whoop Whoop!  That's the sound of me doing the happy dance.  Please forgive yet another table runner post but I finished my project for the Modern Quilt Guild of Ireland swap on time.  It's been posted and should arrive to my swap partner today!  I'm so happy with how this turned out. 

Also forgive the indoor photo, I finished hand sewing the binding down at the last minute and have no daylight photos.  In Ireland at this time of year approaching the shortest day of the year it's dark until well after 8am and the sun is getting low in the sky around 3.30pm!

I had a devil of a time choosing binding for this that matched both the front and back.  I pulled all that I could from my stash and in the end decided that the front was more important and so I chose this white with light green dots to keep a bright clean feeling to the project. 

Another lesson learned.  Don't pick backing because it's Christmassy and I like the pattern!  This runner, that I designed putting 3 star blocks together, has angles greater than 90 degrees so mitred corners on the binding is a little different than squared edges.  I backstitched 1/4" away from the edge.

And then I found the easiest way to create the mitred corner was, to hold the straight edge I want to sew next straight ahead of me and fold the binding straight up lining up with edge of the quilt sandwich.

Then fold it straight down making sure the binding lies exactly on top of the first fold.

 You get a little pocket that when folded to the back gives a nice mitred finish.

I did this the whole way round, all the odd corners, and folded the binding back and held it in place with some clips.  Then I hand sewed the binding to the back of the runner.

It's fairly dotty but I like it!  We also had to put a small Christmas decoration in with our table runner so I crocheted a snowflake from the December edition of Simply Crochet magazine.

Crochet drives me bananas sometimes and I had to rip out round 4 three times but got there in the end!

So now they are all on the way to my swap partner.  Hope she likes them!  
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and

WIP Tablerunner for Christmas!

This is my 100th post - yay!  It almost feels like a birthday and there should be cake.  I'm amazed how quickly this came around and delighted to be posting a Wednesday Work in Progress for my 100th!

The Modern Quilt Guild of Ireland Swap deadline is this week so this weekend it was all guns blazing trying to quilt my Christmas table runner.  After staring at it for a week wondering how to go about this I eventually came up with outlining - yes it did take me a week to come up with that!

I did think about a fancy free motion continuous star pattern but I wasn't brave enough to try it on this so close to the deadline.  On the next runner I make for my mum I might just give it a go.  She likes the fabric in this so much she wants one for herself!

For straight line quilting I normally leave my machine settings at the default but I noticed on the beautiful swap mini quilt that I received from Christina over at Feeling Sew Blessed that she had used a longer stitch length and it really stood out so I googled for a bit and found other quilters liking 3.5-4 as a stich length so I tried that.  I really like the stitch definition and it is easier to rip out which thankfully I only had to do twice!

So quilting all finished, binding next!  Can't wait to finish and pop this in the post to my swap partner!  I love swaps.  This is my 3rd this year and each time I've learned something new.  This was a great project and I hope to be posting a finish for it on Friday.

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