Blend Hip Holiday Table Topper Update

I've just published the pattern for this holiday table topper here. It will make a great gift for family and friends, so check it out.

The Blend Hip Holiday Challenge

This year our guild is participating in the Blend Fabrics challenge to create new quilty things from their Hip Holiday line designed by Josephine Kimberling. Each participating guild member has been provided with a ten by ten square of each print in the line. We are allowed to add additional fabric from the line, or any coordinating solid, and completed pieces are due this month.
Wonder of wonders, I completed my piece last week, a full two weeks before it was due at our guild meeting.
The best part of this challenge is that all we submit are pictures, which Blend Fabrics can use as they see fit. The finished pieces are ours to keep.
Those who have been following me for awhile know that I go all out to decorate for Christmas. Every room gets the full treatment, and I have quite an assortment of items I've made for this purpose. For this project I decided to make a table topper that I can use in the den on our coffee table. This is what I came up with for a design. The central focus print shows old woody station wagons headed hither and yon with Christmas trees strapped on top. That sure said "road trip" to me, so I used flying geese to suggest the round-about journey in search of the perfect tree.

Not satisfied to use a simple backing, I also decided to piece the back and echo the geese and blocks from the front. I'm glad I did that as I now have a reversible table topper that can work with different decorations depending on my mood. Also, the red side probably won't show so much of the dog hair that seems to embed itself into every textile around the house. Sigh.
When I got around to quilting it up, I had just finished a section of Leah Days' Free Motion Quilting a Sampler class on Craftsy.com. In the video class she demonstrated how to make the wandering clover design, so I had to work some of that into the project. Don't know if you can see it too well in this picture of the actual quilt, but it's a really easy and forgiving filler that is just a bit more interesting than a standard stipple. I've added a line drawing to show it a bit better. Every inch or so you pause in the stippling to add a three petaled clover. Note that even my line drawing isn't perfect. I have a few lines too close to each other and (gasp) I actually crossed my own line once or twice. It's OK. I've given myself permission not to be perfect. How about you? Give it a try

So that's it for today. The holiday sewing is officially underway!

Update: I've just published the pattern on Craftsy.com. Check it out here.

Floating Frames

Are you familiar with Hawthorne Threads? I know I've written about this online shop before, and not to go overboard, but they really are smart about how they present their product. They have the very best newsletter, at least from their point of view. They send me a newsletter via email every week, and every week the photos suck me right in and I start imagining what I will make with some newly arrived fabric line. Isn't it funny how a well designed newsletter can make a product irresistible while poor photographs or a busy, busy newsletter design can turn you off completely?

A couple of months ago a newsletter showed up with pictures of P&B Textiles new design Hello Dahlia. It wasn't a minute before I knew I needed to buy some of it... perhaps even lots of it. I think at first it caught my eye because of the name. My mom grew really pretty deep crimson dahlias and I always loved them. What you don't get from this group photo is the dramatic difference in scale in these prints.

I bought mostly greys and blacks with just a few prints with some red. When the package arrived I was delighted to find that the prints with names like Abstract Floral, Mosaic, and Printed Lines, were quite subtle, but the focus print called Hello Dahlia indeed says HELLO! I still didn't know what the quilt would look like, but I knew I needed a piece of that to focus the design. I also knew that these colors were just right for a woman I was planning to give a quilt for Christmas. And I thought that something rather improvisational would be right for her as well. At first I thought about doing another wonky log cabin, but I thought she deserved an original design - not something I had done before.  

What I ended up with is a collection of frames - some filled with images and some appearing empty - all floating on point in a sea of the black abstract floral. There is a lot going on in this design, but still plenty of neutral space for interesting quilting.

And the back is pieced too, so hopefully it will work as a reversible. Can't wait to get quilting on it. I think I can make some of those frames pop and others recede with some careful free motion quilt work. Once I get it finished I'll write up the pattern and give you a heads up that it is available. That was my finish for the week. How about you?

Another Finish

About a year ago I wrote about making napkins. In a couple of cases I made napkins to match table runners I gave to friends and family. I've made quite a few of the insulated table runners that can serve as one big hot pad in the center of the table. This pink and cream one was designed to match my mother-in-laws dishes, and I fussy cut roses and appliqued them hither and yon.

This one has a similar story. It was made for a favorite aunt to go with her Franciscan Apple dishes. And I made a few others. 

Even before I made these gifts, I had one planned for myself. Mine was going to be big and I planned to use it on the kitchen counter to the left of my stove. I have a granite countertop to the right which I can set hot pans on, but I thought it would be nice when cooking for a big group to have plenty of surface to take something hot.

Well guess what! After only about a year and a half. I finally finished mine.

Truth be told, now that it's finished, I don't know if I will ever use it. With family far away we don't have lots of big family dinners here at the house, and the only big party I cook for at home is at Christmas. This fabric definitely doesn't say Happy Holidays. But at least the project is out of the  UFO pile.

And it does have a really adorable little girl and pup for a back. In fact the whole design was predicated on using this panel for the backing. I don't usually go for cutesy images or sayings, but I really liked the cherry pie fabric, and for some unknown reason felt I had to order the panel which was part of the collection. But for the rectangular panel I wanted to use for the backing, I might have designed something square, like this.

But that's another  project for another time. Right now it's time to dig through the UFO pile and finish up a few more projects! How about you? What are you finishing up this week? Month?  Year?

Did I Say Blocks?

I've mentioned a couple of times that I'm participating in Craftsy's free Block of the Month quilting project. Well here is the block for July.

I don't really love the colors, but the contrst definitely makes the 3D impression work. Laura Nownes calls it tumbling blocks or baby blocks. The way they are floating there, they do look like they ought to fall over.

The assignment for August and September was to piece a basket and then applique a bunch of flowers in it. I know, right? I just couldn't make myself cut into fabric to make something that sweet. It makes me think of Sunbonnet Sue. Instead I made this block. 

It's called the New York Beauty Circle of Geese, and I do LOVE it. In october we are supposed to make strips of traditional flying geese and these will somehow pull this whole crazy collection of blocks together. Except of course they aren't really blocks. They are all different sizes, and it's a bit hard to imagine a way to make them pull together. Here is Laura finished quilt.

I think she did an admirable job of designing a block of the month quilt that covers lots of new techniques. I've already used partial seams and Y-seams in a couple of projects I've designed. At the same time, I keep looking at this and I can't find any place for my eye to rest. Now take a look at the collection of piece parts I have to work with.

I tried laying them all out on a bed. Yes I know I need a good design wall but what can I say. For now the bed is what I've got.

 Can you say busy? I can't really imagine being able to fall asleep with all that happening on top of me. I've half a mind to take the larger blocks and turn each into the centerpiece of it's own quilt or wall hanging. Some of the smaller blocks could be joined up to make pillows. And I could make a zillion more spools and use them as borders around one of the big blocks. What say you?