Getting Ready to Fold Up the Holiday Quilts

Christmas Stars is my first finish of the year! Yay! I had a couple other things to post about, but this needed to go on record before January was over and done with. Kinda late for a first finish {for me}, but what can I say? The binding work just didn't seem super exciting compared to some other options.

It looks so cozy!

After a little bit of back and forth about possible colors and shades for the binding, I finally settled on something of a medium green. It took several pieces of similar colors to make up the total length, but I have to say, this was spot on for being the perfect complement.

Christmas Stars is a true blue finish!

I am in LOVE with this quilt. It's one of those that I look at and say, 'Did I really make that? Me?' It just seems so unlike so much of what I do and yet.... it's all there. The simplicity of color repeats, the sawtooth stars in scrappy prints, the flying geese. I've done all of this before. It's really nothing new.

Love the touch of florals in this quilt

One of the things that I've always been so resistant to in Christmassy quilts is how precious the prints often are. I adore that this quilt actually has very minimal true Christmas themed prints. It's all in the colors and feel. It can be a holiday quilt or not.

Flying geese are always a good border idea

So very, very glad that this Basic Grey red fabric was sitting there in the stash waiting for the perfect project. How sad that it didn't work out as the original intent of being a backing fabric. Not! I'm pretty sure this is not something that I would have ever willingly chosen for the overall background fabric in a holiday quilt. Do you see how velvety it looks in the right light though? How could anything else have possibly worked better? Total serendipity to have this on hand when I was in the mood to play. 

Looking ready for serious use!

And the oldie moldy greens that found a good home in the flying geese units?*sigh  This quilt has a super special place in my heart and mind. It will be great fun pulling this one out year after year, I can assure you! And though I promised my younger daughter a Christmas quilt of her own {after her older sister talked me out of a previous one}, these will not be in the offing.

A successful use of all the boring fabrics

The backing ended up looking pretty good after all the quilting texture was added too. So scrappy and utilitarian. Really fills me with the glees to see all these off colored greens hop onto the back of a good quilt and finally be useful. It's about time! I think this is the second backing I've made just from the random green fabrics that seemed too awful to use in the front of a quilt. Why of why did I buy so many of these years and years ago?? Ughh.  The Tired Greens project is definitely helping get fabrics out of the stash totes, but, unfortunately there is more to do...

These are the keepers

And just for fun, I took a picture of these three Christmas quilts together. The primitive-look Festival of Trees finished up in 2010, the quarter log cabin quilt finished up last year and the new Christmas Stars. These three are mine forever, never to be given away. I have found that I quite relish getting out my holiday quilts every year and enjoying them for 6 weeks to 2 months--usually right up to the first of February. The Festival of Trees one has definitely gotten sun faded in that long strip of plaid fabric right in the center of the quilt. It happened in the first two years of use, in the very short window of time I leave it draped over the back of a chair during the holidays. So disappointing, but nothing else seems faded. And now I'm accustomed. Oh well. About time to fold them all up and put them in a darkish cupboard until next December!

About Ready To Turn the Page To the New Year!

Got the Christmas Stars quilt into the hoop. Finally! I've been running so far behind on where the quilt line-up 'should be' this year that I just wanna shake my head. Not making a lot of progress on plowing through the completed quilt tops 'cuz I'm too busy making new.

Christmas Stars next up in the hoop

No matter. Christmas Day might be behind us, but I'm still very much in the mood to work on a quilt that looks like this. I made a total of four Christmas-look quilt tops within the last year and a half. Just to hand quilt during the holidays! This was one of the first two attempted and probably the most obviously holiday looking.

Almost ready to pin...

Very poor planning for fitting the individual blocks inside the quilting hoop though.*wink  How inefficient is this? Mostly I just get a larger background square into the hoop and then pull off the side clamps whenever they get in the way of stitching on the stars. So annoying to move the hoop every half an hour or so.

Keeping the stitching simple on this one!

And it always feels wonderful to have a true blue, absolutely finished quilt to finish out the year. This one has such a cozy vibe, it could have happily been laying across my lap for another week or two and I wouldn't even have cared. Love all the scrappy feels.

Strippy Triangles is a finish!

It was tricky to get try and get a good pic of the full quilt, so this will have to do. I'm sure it would be soo much better if I managed to get the quilt properly arranged during that 20 minutes of perfect lighting we seem to have this time of year!

Lots and lots of triangles

It took me almost three evenings to finally figure out exactly how those long skinny gray strips were going to have to be hand quilted. I tried vines with leaves, vines with berries, straight lines, and then finally ended up with a double stitched wavy vine without any extras at all. Still wasn't 100% sure until there was several stitched frames to look at. Okay. That should do it!

Hand quilting for the win!

All along I thought the binding would have to be black, but then.... Nope! The quilt wanted red for some reason. Good thing there was enough of the right colors hanging around in the stash totes or this would have had to be delayed for quite awhile. Fabric shopping is not exactly on the priority list right after the holidays, though of course I wish it was. No gift cards for Christmas this year, but I really can't complain. My youngest daughter gifted me with a box of Valdani perle cotton thread.*sigh  I'm so in love.... Would it be silly to design an entire quilt around a variegated thread color?

All ready for cuddling

Also included in this end-of-the-year post is the very last completed quilt top, Crossroads. Once I got the applique out of the way, then it was only a matter of cutting out the sashing strips and finding time to sew the rows.

Just a little underwhelming

As you can see, I was trying to stick fairly close to the antique quilt inspiration this time. Not ever exactly, but hopefully my interpretation rings true for the overall spirit of the quilt! How boring if it was a spitting image! This quilt has been in a couple different books I believe, but where I found it is: 'Quilts. An American Heritage' by Terri Zegart, a book published in 1994. I literally paid a dollar for at a quilt show guild booth a couple years ago. 

Taking another look at the original Inspiration

At first, I was just a little disappointed with the wispy, fade-away look it had {see first picture}. If you remember, I had a little play at this very same inspiration with this previous quilt, and somewhere along the way, the vibe of that particular quilt had went sideways on me too. In that case, I just shrugged and went with it. Basically, I was thinking 'Wow, here we go again! Just cannot seem to get this quilt figured out!'

Playing with border ideas

Since border additions are like my secret little addiction, I almost instantly talked myself into adding a blue/peachy pink triangle border. I mean really, before I even gave it any other serious thought, there I was doing the math and auditioning for the most likely scenario. Then I sorta stepped back from it all and thought, 'What am I doing?' A pieced border was going to blow this whole quilt vibe into a million pieces!

So much better with the subtle-y scrappy but plain border

So I folded the quilt top up and purposefully left it on a slow simmer for awhile. Sometime just before I fell asleep that night {the subconscious can work so fast!}, it occurred to me that maybe, maybe? the quilt might welcome a slightly larger, but definitely darker surround of fabric. Hmmm... And something like that probably wouldn't ruin the lovely feeling the original maker had so successfully ended up with. Of course I wanted to immediately run upstairs and check the idea out, but decided that was a very poor idea. Would probably freak everybody in the house out if mama got busy in the quilt room at 1:30 in the morning...

Ahh.. Surely you can see that this make-do, pieced but plain, border looks so much better already. You'll never believe how ugly the darker, almost dingy peachy pinks {mauve?} looked all by their lonesome! It was almost scary to even properly audition them. But attached to the quilt? They are Beea-utiful! Such a wonderful, lovely complement to the rest of the quilt. So very glad that I hit pause and took a few extra minutes to think it all through.

Still trying to learn what the secret really is!

It's always so exciting when the perfect solution makes itself known and all the cranky quilt problems can just drift away. I totally have a soft spot for these antique quilt interpretations that I've been dabbling with now for several years. I always think that if I can just successfully interpret a few of these fabulously unpretentious quilts {unpack their secrets}, then in some mysterious way, the look/feel/spirit of these quilts will somehow rub off onto mine. I'm earnestly trying because these are the best of best quilts to me. 

Now I'm dreaming up ideas for the cream fabric cut-outs from behind these gold circles. Which absolutely needs to be a series, right? Because there's definitely gonna be a quilt from those cut-out circles next. I mean, why not? Happy Happy New Year to All! We'll probably be having a quiet evening at home this year by ourselves, just me and the husband. Sounds good to me!

Christmas Quilt Tops Are Now Completed

So I feel pretty good about these two Christmas quilt tops. Yeah, yeah, the holidays are over. I get that. But in my world, finishing these two tops now means I'm that much closer to having completed Christmas quilts by next season. Yay!

Christmas Stars a completed quilt top!

This background fabric was the only red fabric that I had any serious yardage of and truly, I had my doubts about how well it would work. Normally I would choose out a cheery red for a holiday look and this is more of a tomato red with, if you look closely, a gray smudgy texture to it. Nevertheless, I plowed ahead, being picky about the star fabrics, and ended up with something I really love. This particular fabric {a Basic Grey fabric I had bought on clearance for the backing of another quilt}, surprisingly ended up giving this quilt a wonderful velvety look. How cool that my 'make-do' choice successfully amped up the holiday vibe too. Could never have planned it so well!

Approx. 67" x 80 1/2"

As you know, I had also challenged myself to include some of those older, less promising greens in the quilts too.  These greens did not look very attractive directly next to the background red, but in a loosely stacked grouping of fabrics looked just fine. Ughh. What to do? Telling myself, 'This will work! Cross your fingers, this IS going to work', I went ahead and cut out the flying geese for the border regardless of any internal misgivings.

Flying Geese border

Piecing the flying geese only further deepened my suspicions that the borders were going to be a total waste of time, a disaster in the making. The colors were just too cringy together and what in the world was I thinking??  But you know me, never give up! And later I was so very happy with that optimism. This border really adds to the depth of this particular quilt. If I had given in to all the doubt and went with perfectly matched greens, the quilt would have looked sweet, perhaps?, but very, very dull. This way, it has a great spark.*whew!

Happy with the Christmas look to this one!

Looking at the inspiration picture below {an antique quilt shown in the June 2011 American Patchwork and Quilting magazine}, you can probably see why I first thought that the lighter greens could potentially work for the pieced border. While the original maker used more of a khaki color, all that is required really, would be a color that would sharply contrast with the red background without competing with the much more interesting star center of the quilt. A rich mustard color might work too, it's hard to say. What I do know NOW, is that overly matching colors in the border would have blended a little too well with the inside stars and thus reduced the impact of that wonderful 'framing'. Something to think about if you're wanting to make this quilt for yourself! Basic directions for fabric/ cutting are at the end of this post. *Not included in those directions are the outside red border lengths, of which I'm sure many of you can determine sizing according to personal taste.

Christmas Stars inspiration pic

The second Christmas quilt is a very simple design. The inspiration came after combing through my Pinterest boards in search of something super easy. The design maybe doesn't present quite as sharp looking, sewn in printed fabrics instead of the solids in the original, but it perfectly suited my needs.

The 2nd Christmas quilt

Between the flying geese border in the previous quilt, these 6" hourglass blocks, and a pieced backing, I am making very good progress with using up many of these old fabrics. With the flying geese, all the greens used ended up being light green to very light greens, with the exception of the darker star tips. The greens in these hourglass blocks are a slightly stronger value mix as I thought this quilt needed the interest more. The goal being to get rid of this particular range of colors in the stash totes, in each quilt made, the selection was purposefully limited. I cut till each individual fabric was exhausted, before moving on to the next. All scraps were then dumped into the scrap bin where they may or may not be used some day in the future. We'll cross that bridge when we get there!

Lots of older, tired green fabrics used

As you can see, several green fabrics feature pink flowers. Why toss them? I'm never afraid to blend pink and red in any quilt and in fact, love the surprise of an unexpected fabric choice in scrap quilts. I will say that I was a little dubious about the need for a completely different colored border, but went with it because the theme for this was supposed to be 'Christmas'. Adding red should make that a little more obvious. Okey dokey! Whatever the quilt needs!

As it turned out, adding the red makes all the difference in the world as to how interesting this quilt looks. Why, you ask? Well, before the border addition, the green and cream acted a bit bland. Now the contrasting red gives the lighter greens an excuse to perk up significantly against the creamy white background. It just looks more playful. It's really hard to describe, but trust me. That's exactly what happened. With the bold Christmas floral that will be used for the backing, I'm thrilled with the overall holiday vibe this quilt exudes, albeit in a very serene way! And so easy to make. Do not regret this squirrel at all!

A make-do pieced border

If you look at the border in the picture above, you can see that I had to piece the red border with different fabrics. I loved this leftover red/brown polka dot print, but did not have nearly enough. No worries. We'll make it work! And for a seasonal holiday throw quilt, who really cares?

Approx. 55" x 61"

Sewing together hourglass blocks is not my favorite thing to do in the world, so much bunching at the seam in the center. It's been years since I made anything similar, but this time I remembered to iron by picking the iron up and then setting it back down, not attempting to maul the quilt into submission. Mostly it went fine, but any and all rumples are absolutely maker 'error'!

Very sweet looking quilt....

So that wraps up the two main Christmas quilts I started during the first part of December. Because the design was already predetermined, the work went very quickly. So glad to put them behind me and move on to other projects, but even more, I'm absolutely delighted to have found a good use for these older, tired looking fabrics. It's looking like a positive challenge so far, but I'm expecting to get bogged down at some point. Probably when I have to address the orange fabrics! Ha! Don't even want to go there!

Two more quilts are cut out that could possibly be used during the holiday season, but I don't consider them exclusively 'Christmas' quilts. That should make them easy to work on moving forward. They too have a little bit of these 'So Tired' fabrics, but unfortunately not enough to make a huge difference to the stack. As I have said before though, there's no point in making ugly quilts just to feel good about being frugal and in fact, I have completely tossed two completely worthless fabrics. Not even good enough for backing! It's been a very good time for working to 'finish up' projects. This time of year definitely tends to bring that out in me. There's a couple other projects that have been languishing for entirely too long and maybe now is the time to get them out of the way as well? We'll see how long the energy lasts. Linking up to Wendy's Peacock Party.

Tis The Season!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone! We have the sugar cookies and caramel corn taken care of and now, it's time to start baking the pies. Don't you just love tradition?

Making sugar cookies

All my packages have arrived except one and thankfully it was just a few stocking stuffers. Out here in rural America, the package arrival dates can be less than as promised. In whatever spare time that I could find, I've been working on the Christmas Stars quilt.

Christmas Stars

All that's left to do is a pieced border of flying geese, which is already cut out. Loving the look of this simple quilt so much. Very 'country living' and cozy looking which is really all that I'm wanting it to be right now.

A closer look

Why oh why haven't I made more holiday quilts in years past? You're going to laugh, but I've cut out two more. They are very simple and nothing that screams cheesy Christmas. Some year I intend to have enough to put on all the beds during the season. A girl can dream!

The quilters who have posted these sorts of pictures this month have made me sigh with envy. Apparently it's time to join the party! Even if I run out of fun sewing these together this year, I will have them prepped and ready to work on when the holiday cycles around once again. Like I mentioned before, I'm never in the mood to work on Christmas quilts until Christmas! Though I intend to work on them a bit leading up to New Years, I sincerely doubt the momentum will hold for much longer. Again with the best wishes for a wonderful holiday, however it is that you spend your time!

*Update for those who are curious about the pattern. This quilt is based on a picture of an antique quilt I saw in the June 2011 American Patchwork & Quilting magazine. It has been in my inspiration binders for years! Super easy to make up your own version.

Make 20-9" {finished} Sawtooth Square blocks. For each block cut out:

• 1--5 3/4" square of background fabric. Cut on diagonal and then crosscut again making 4 triangles total
• 4--2 3/4" squares of background fabric
• 4--3 1/8" squares of star tip fabric. Cut on diagonal once
• 1--5" squares of star center fabric

Sew together blocks according to normal Sawtooth Star directions. Might have to trim slightly.

Cut red fabric for adjoining red squares and setting triangles:

• Cut 12--9 1/2" squares of red fabric
• Cut 4--14" squares of red fabric. Cut on diagonal and then crosscut again. Will use 14 of these triangles
• Cut 2--7 1/4" squares of red fabric. Cut on diagonal

Cut pieces for flying geese border:

• Cut 27--5 3/4" squares of red fabric for inside flying geese units. Cut on diagonal and then crosscut again.
• Cut 108--3 1/8" squares of green fabric for flying geese points. Cut on diagonal once

Have not tested the flying geese units to see if they actually will fit properly, but according to the math there should be 22 flying geese at the top of the quilt {flying sideways} and 28 along the side {flying in the vertical orientation}, plus two more at each of the corners flying vertically as well.

Good luck!