Christmas quilt finish

Merry (belated) Christmas and Happy (belated) New Year!

I was away from home for a couple of weeks and didn't have the foresight to do posts ahead of time, so I'm just now sharing a couple presents I gifted over the holiday.

My mom had sent me a a bunch of Christmas fabric a while back and I got the idea to make my parents a Christmas quilt as a gift.  I liked that the fabrics weren't over the top, but it's definitely Christmas-y.  I think the cream and the blue helped mellow it out a bit, you know?

I cut up yardage from my stash into 5" squares for the top.  Here's a close-up of some of the blocks:

The back has a large piece of cream/gold pattern across the middle and some random FQ Christmas patterns I had in my stash on either end.  It's simply quilted on either side of the seams.

I forgot to take a picture of the binding, but it's done with a print of snowy evergreen trees.  My favorite thing about this quilt is that it's all from my stash!  Yay for lovely presents that don't cost an arm and a leg :)

Considering the weather in MD (and here in KY) is absolutely frigid, hopefully they'll get good use out of it before it gets put away until next year!

Linking up with Confessions of a Fabric Addict's Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?

Sunday Stash #5

It's kind of ironic that I have recently gone on a fabric buying spree and have made very little progress in using any of it!  Oh well, here's my stash share for the week:

I saw these fleur de lis fat quarters at my LQS sale last week and couldn't resist.  I love fleur de lis - they pay homage to my new city of Louisville and were the only real "theme" at my wedding.  I am thinking of turning them into cloth napkins (using the above pairings) based on this tutorial.  My only concern is that each set of FQ makes two napkins, which means that they end up kind of small (18"x11").  I guess that smaller size would be OK for our lunch boxes?  Thoughts, anyone?

Linking up with Sunday Stash at Finding Fifth.

Sunday Stash #4

Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving!  Or, for any international readers, a good weekend :)

Remember when I went a little crazy and ordered a bunch of fabric from StashModernFabric?  I had fallen in love with the Afternoon Garden colorway from Joel Dewberry's Bungalow line and I decided to (finally get on the bandwagon) and make a Swoon quilt with it.  The only "problem" was that Swoon requires 18 FQ, and my bundle only had 12.  What's a girl to do but browse the Internets for more fabric to buy??

And low and behold, Beth at Stash had a bundle of coordinating solids!  And there were 6 FQ in the bundle!  And 12 + 6 = 18!  Yay!  Beth was also having a sale on Essex linen, which I'd never worked with but wanted to try.  I thought I'd try and go darker for the background, since one of the solids in the bundle was cream-colored, but really wasn't sure what to go with.  I originally thought I'd try Denim, but after some back and forth with Beth decided to go with Indigo instead (I told you she was helpful!).

Can't wait to get started on this one!  I've already decided on my fabric pairs!

Linking up with Sunday Stash with the fabulous Molli Sparkles!

Finish it up Friday - Christmas present edition!

Happy Black Friday, all!  If you're braving the crowds, more power to you.  This is kind of a cheeky Finish it up Friday post, as what I've finished is Christmas shopping for my side of the family!

We're spending Thanksgiving with my family and Christmas with my husband's family this year.  I figured rather than ship all the presents closer to Christmas, I'd make it my goal to get the shopping done early and bring them when we're there visiting.  There are four home-made presents within this pile, and of course I can't reveal all of them.  I did, however, tell you about the pouch I made and my plan to fill it with some goodies.

Now before you go thinking that I'm all ahead of the game, remember, this is stuff for my side of the family.  We've gotten a start on my husband's family, but that list is no where near complete.  Thank goodness we've got a few more weeks to go!

Linking up with Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Crazy Mom Quilts.

WIP Wednesday

One of the many excellent blogs I follow is Melissa at Happy Quilting.  She posts bunches of tutorials, free patterns and quilt-alongs, but I had never done one of her quilts.  Clearly that's a situation that needed to be rectified, so I decided to take my FQ of Florence and follow Melissa's Starburst Quilt-A-Long and make the 32" blocks.

First Melissa recommends you sort your fabrics into columns and rows that will work well with each star.  Here's what I came up with.  The columns are the fabrics for each of 4 stars and the rows are the components to the star (burst points, star center and star surround).

This quilt is made assembly-line style, so next you cut all the fabrics according to Melissa's handy cutting chart.  That includes the background fabric, which for me is Kona Bone.  I managed to be really careful cutting the 7/8ths but somehow cut the easy 4 1/2" squares as 4 1/4" instead.  Oops.  Fortunately, I had enough fabric to correct my mistake.  Here's my cut pieces ready to go!

Notice the new cutting mat?  An early Christmas present from the hubs!

I have actually gotten my goose in the corner blocks and HST blocks all sewed together, but only have half the HST trimmed up at this point.  No photo though, sorry!

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Fresh Modern Quilts!

Sunday Stash #3

Hi all, sorry for the lack of posts this week - I've been under the weather.  Either my allergies are kicking my tail or I've got a cold, but either way it's poor timing with Thanksgiving coming up this week. 

Anyway, to bolster my spirits (and support the local economy!) I went to my LQS, Among Friends Quilt Shop, for their sale-abration yesterday.  Remember when I wrote about choosing colors and getting better at picking them myself instead of relying on pre-packaged bundles?  Well, I gave it a shot.  I decided on the following color scheme from Design-Seeds:

And this is what I came up with:

The fat quarters are random assorted fabrics (no labels, although the solids are Moda) and the dark grey is Bella Solid in Graphite.  One of my other Sewing with Certainty goals was to actually do one of the BOMs that I have pinned.  So my plan is to follow the Summer Sampler Series with the various fat quarter colors as the star blocks and the dark grey as the background.  I've already planned a slight diversion from the plan, though, as I'm not a big fan of the stars with strings.  I'll have to figure out other blocks to sub in for those two.  Thoughts, anyone?

Linking up with Sunday Stash at Finding Fifth.

Sunday Stash #2

Happy Sunday!

I don't do a lot of ordering online, but StashModernFabrics was having a sale on Free Spirit fabrics and a couple of bundles caught me eye!  Stash is a great shop and the owner, Beth, is really nice.  She also helped me pull together a custom bundle once before - I sent her the pattern I wanted to do and the fabric requirements and she picked a great assortment of prints for me.  I get so nervous about trying to find coordinating colors off a computer screen, so I was very appreciative of Beth's willingness to help!  This time, though, I went for a couple of designer FQ bundles.

This bundle is the Afternoon Garden colorway (12 FQ) from Joel Dewberry's Bungalow line.  I love the bright colors - fuchsia, chartreuse and teal with a little bit of softer pink.  I think I'll make something for myself from this one!  I have the Swoon pattern somewhere around here, or maybe one of Melissa's (from Happy Quilting) star-themed quilt alongs?

And this bundle is the Malachite colorway (13 FQ) from Denyse Schmidt's Florence line.  I liked these colors (various shades of greens, blues and black) because it's a little more man-friendly and I have at least one wedding coming up in the next year.  I did one wedding quilt in her Chicopee line previously, so this would be a nice continuation of that tradition.

And last but not least, a little bit of Ed Emberley from the Happy Drawing, Too collection.  I had an Ed Emberley book as a kid that I thought was fun (anyone else remember the thumb print drawings??) and thought about buying a bundle when this line first came out but didn't really have any project in mind for it.  This time, though, sentiment won out and I bought a single half yard of the doggies :)  It's always good to have some good boy-friendly fabric on hand, right??

Well, that's enough shopping for me for a while!  Although, my LQS, Among Friends Quilt Shop, is having a sale-abration for their 10th anniversary next week and I might have to go check it out...

Linking with Lisa in Port Hope for Sunday Stash!