An Evergreen Finish

I've wanted some quilted Christmas decorations around the house for several years now, but actually making them has kept getting pushed off for one reason or another.  However, not so this year!

This year I have two new holiday pieces up on display!  My first finish was a holiday frost table runner (shown here), and the second is an evergreen tree advent calendar.  The top (inspired by this tree by Turid of densyendehimmel.) was completed in May.  Then it was quilted with a holly and berry motif and bound in one of the gold fabrics used in the stars.

There are small green buttons sewn on the tree as hanging hardware that blend in better than I hoped.  The one downside is that I think the ornaments might have been easier to hang if I had put the buttons on backwards - there's not a lot of room for the twine to rest, as is, and not all of the ornaments can be hung at all spots.  Still, it's a pretty minor problem and something I could fix in the future if need be!

The ornament buttons were collected over the past year, and there is one for every day of December leading up to Christmas.  Some peppermint twine pulled from my stash seemed a perfect touch!  It's a lot of fun to watch this little tree fill up!

Linking up with Let's Bee Social.

Evergreen Tree

It's been a long time coming, but our house is finally finished and we're all moved in!  Since the house is brand new construction there isn't anything around it but sand yet, so it's a good thing I brought a tree of my own!  It has a little growing left to do, but by Christmas time it should be just about ready to decorate.

Current Size: 28x36
My tree was inspired by this tree by Turid of densyendehimmel.

Linking up with Let's Bee Social.

Christmas Buttons!

These past few weeks have seen more shop hopping than sewing, but today's shops gave me the perfect opportunity to start a collection of "ornaments" for my advent tree!

Yes, that is a dinosaur.  :)

Linking up with Let's Bee Social.

Common Ground

One last look backwards before starting to create for the new year...

The last piece that I finished in 2013 was this wall hanging.  I'm very proud of this piece.  It was an interesting challenge to construct a quilt from a non-quilter's pattern and very meaningful to be able to make this for my niece.  In addition, it is the first piece that I managed to make mostly from my stash!

Common Ground
24 x 24"
Machine pieced, Hand quilted.

I may have attached the sleeve in a hotel room the evening before we flew out of town.  Excellent conditions to work on my first sleeve in at least eight years.  When I had to un-stitch part to fix it, that small little hotel room was not a very nice place to be.  I think my husband may be a saint.

Linking up to Let's Bee Social.

Wall Hanging Update

This wall-hanging needs to be finished by Monday and I've been working really hard to make that happen.  Last night I sewed the final cloud and finished all the sky sections.

Next up: mountains!

Hopefully I'll be able to finish at least one this afternoon.  I can't wait to see what a finished block will look like.

Sunday Stash and Quilting the Sky

Over Thanksgiving, I visited quite a few quilt shops.  In one week I added 20 yards of fabric to my stash!  So I'm going to break it up into a couple of posts.  Here's the first half...

Doesn't it look so pretty piled there?
Let's take a closer look!

I couldn't resist this map of the solar system.  And look!  It even recognizes Pluto!  Bonus.

In other news, I'm not a Trekkie.  Not at all; why do you ask?

The first store I visited was in New York City and they had some city specific fabrics.  A good number of them were too flashy for me, but this piece caught my eye.  The background is a sepia map of the streets covered with the name tiles from subway stops.  And I won it by checking the website before going, because there weren't any bolts on the floor when I was there.

In addition, I've been making some progress on my niece's wall hanging. Not as much as I need to be making, but progress nonetheless.

All four sets of trees have been finished.  Each of the four blocks also has a sun, and one block has the entire sky quilted.  The sun was quilted with a doubled strand of cotton thread in the hopes that it would stand out.  I'm not sure that was entirely successful, and it was a pain in the rear to work with.

Linking up with Sunday Stash and Fabric Tuesday.

Giving Thanks and Productivity

What a productive holiday I've had.  In between long bouts of relaxing, eating, and the occasional walk, I've made some granny squares...

...and after people threatened to use them for coasters several times, I made some actual coasters for my parents' new house.

I worked on quilting a certain wall hanging.  Two sets of trees down, but there's still a long way to go.  I sure hope I can have this done in three weeks.  I have to get a serious move on!

And last but not least, my little scorpion was given a tail!  I've started a couple of cross-stitches but have never finished one.  Finishing a cross-stitch is on my bucket list, and there's no time like the present to start working towards it!

(Before and After)

Linking up with Fabric Tuesday and WiP Wednesday.

A Friday Finish!

My niece had to design a quilt pattern for a class.  When I heard about this I knew I had to see what the pattern looked like.  I thought it would be a cool gift if I could make something using her pattern.

When the pattern came I was worried.  Very worried.  When someone who is not a quilter draws a design... well, I took one look and was ready to run screaming for the hills!  It was complicated looking.  And all the shapes I had never dealt with before were intimidating!

But I was determined.

So I started designing.  And pulling some fabric.  And doing a lot of procrastinating.  Interspersed with a whole bunch of winging it.

The trees were not so difficult once I had the right rulers, but I completely and utterly made things up as I went on the mountains.  (It worked once, so I just crossed my fingers and wished until I finished the other three.  Seems reasonable, right?)

This wall-hanging has had more than its share of issues along the way.   And where there are seams coming together, there are a LOT of seams coming together.

But I think it came out pretty darn well at the end of it all!

If you look closely there are two different skies.  One on each diagonal

As you can see, I have already started auditioning some backs.

Linking up with Finish it up Friday.

Gathering Momentum

After some helpful comments last week and a trip to my local fabric store, I came up with a plan to move forward.  I now have two different skies and I will be making two blocks with each color for this 4 block wall-hanging.

The new fabric is in the back

I was able to find this blue at my local quilt shop, which matches the original pretty darn well, if I do say so myself.  I'm not sure I could have gotten any luckier!  Also the color is called "sky", which is perfect.  It's now washed, ironed, and waiting its turn.

In the meantime, I ripped out the two large trees that were now in the wrong color and assembled the smaller trees for my first fabric sets.

 

I didn't quite make it to sewing it all together yet, but soon!  I've been too busy hiking mountains of late.  Eight mountains and an 8.5 mile run... all in the past three weeks.  But now there needs to be some recovery time, my body is demanding it, and so my sewing room won't be so lonely for a while.

And in true quilter fashion, I have found a mini quilt challenge going on over at Celtic Thistle Stitches that ends on Friday but has caught my attention anyway.  I have a block designed but I don't know if I'll be able to pull it all together in two days.  Wish me luck!

Linking up to W.i.P Wednesday.

Growing Trees and Not Enough Fabric

Test Set

I've started a new project!

I started out by trying to make my triangles using regular rulers at first.  It was complicated and took a lot of time to figure out, but I had almost got it.  And that was when I realized I wouldn't have enough fabric to make this method work.

So I broke down, found some coupons in my inbox and bought the silly tri-recs ruler set at Joann's for half off.  It was a very good move; well worth the money!

I finished making my test set and started cutting into the real fabric.  After I made my largest triangles (6 inch tall blocks) I ran into a big problem.  I started thinking about what came after the trees and realized I need easily twice as much sky blue as I have.  Oh no!  I bought this fabric forever ago, so getting more is almost certainly out of the question.

The blue already used is in the back.

I really don't want to have to take out what I've already done and start over with something new, but I didn't plan on this being scrappy.  I scrounged around in my stash and came up with the following options to consider supplementing the blue I've already started with.  I'm not convinced any of them are working for me, so I'll probably be heading out to the store in the next few days to see what I can find...


So, what would you do?  Go scrappy or find a new blue and start over?

A New Fabric Pull

I managed to sneak in some sewing time recently and, despite having many projects waiting for some finishing touches, I now have a new wall hanging that I'm starting to work towards.  I started by pulling these fabrics from my collection:

And now I need to figure out how to make some trees.  I made a test block this weekend but was not impressed with how it turned out.  The method I attempted will need some adjusting and I'm not convinced it's the way to go.

So now I'd like to put the question to my visitors!  Does anyone have a favorite (and hopefully easy) method to make an isosceles triangle in a square that they would care to share?

Linking up to W.i.P. Wednesday.