Christmas Sewing

I didn't have very much Christmas sewing this year, which I am thankful for, it was a very calm month. (And we succeeded at finishing our Christmas Shopping BEFORE Thanksgiving for the 2nd year in a row!) But I did make a few small items.

First up is a lovely little mug rug I made for Miss K's kindergarten teacher. I've never done a teacher gift before, but I imagine a teacher gets a lot of similar items each year - and she probably got multiples of what we bought at the store for her, so I wanted to make something more personal.

I adapted the Vintage Pencil Case pattern that is in the Winter 2014 issue of Modern Patchwork Magazine. The pattern only had 5 pencils, but I wanted to complete the rainbow so I added a 6th and widened the borders allowing for the stitching.  The rainbow quilting inspiration came from Me and My Sisters Designs. 

My girls have asked Santa for American Girl dolls (Miss B for a sweet Bitty Baby with yellow hair and green eyes. Miss K for an American Girl doll that is just like her with glasses and earrings, who loves horses just like she does.) I've got an in with the big guy, so I went ahead and made some little quilts to keep the dolls warm. 

Miss B LOVES cat's (if she's not asking for a baby sister she is asking for a "kit-lin"), when Elizabeth @ Oh, Fannson! announced her Catvent-Quilt-Along I knew I  needed to make one for B. Of course I gave up after a few blocks, then added in some more solid faces, and made a lovely little mini. I used B's favorite colors, and she is super excited about it. I FMQ it with echoing flowers. Final measurements are 18" x 24.5" big enough she could wrap her bitty baby up. 

I also had a lot of fun with Miss K's quilt. She LOVES horses (For her birthday this year she asked for a roller skating horse. Thankfully Build-a-Bear was able to come through with that one!) and guitars. She already has a library tote featuring Heather Ross' Far Far Away II cute little girl playing with horses, and I was able to get my hands on a bundle of all of the horse prints and coordinating guitars. Seriously if there was ever a fabric created just for one little girl it was this line!
While I was waiting for my Heather Ross fabric to arrive I came across THIS awesome piec-lique tutorial by Cristy @ Sew Much Like Mom. Seriously go check it out! Life changing! I couldn't wait to try out circles, so I decided to go for it with Miss K's quilt. My circles started out at about 3" diameter, but between the linen in the Heather Ross fabric and the Essex linen I used for the background, the quilt experienced a TON of shrinkage! I got daring and FMQ pebbles in the background! The texture of this quilt is just glorious. And she LOVES it! Thankfully I have a lot more fabric left to make one her size. This quilt finished at 15" x 17.5" a bit smaller than I'd hoped, but hopefully her doll will still stay warm. 

Besides these projects I've been working on my red and white Double Irish Chain, in hopes of getting it done before my husband deploys (eek! that is coming too soon!) and I've taken up cross stitch, but it'll be a really long time before I have any finishes to show you in that department. 

Palatina Pillow

A month ago I shared my Palatina Mini Quilt during the Blogger's Quilt Festival. As I was making it my wonderful friend Tracey was gushing over it, and I knew right away I just needed to make her one. She has a thing for chubby stars. I picked out a pretty color palette, sorted out my low volume background, and got to work. (There is a lovely tutorial for this pillow that can be found here on There's a Thread.)

The crosses were hand appliqued in place, and I hand quilted inside the chubby stars, but left the edges un quilted. I machine quilted just inside the edge of the crosses to give them some more reinforcement (though doing so I realized I could have just machine stitched them on in the first place. Oh well.).

I used matching thread for all of the machine stitching which made for a really pretty background!

The pillow cover fits a 24" pillow form, which is a lovely size for a kiddie floor cushion. Miss B made sure to test it out. =)

I have plans of making one for myself very soon. Though I don't think it will involve any hand work this time around.

Palatina Mini Quilt {Blogger Quilt Festival}

I am so excited the Blogger Quilt Festival is here again! It is my favorite!!

Last week I finished up this Palatina mini for my partner in the Schnitzel & Boo Mini Swap. You can find a tutorial for this project at There's a Thread. I changed things up just a bit. I did hand applique rather than machine, and trimmed the edges closer to the the pluses, leaving a 1/2" border around the edge.

This project was so much fun! I selected all black and white/cream prints for the background and a rainbow spectrum for the pluses.
I used the starch basting method for the pluses, and then hand appliqued them in place. Prepping the pieces took some time, but it is worth it. The pieces held their shape perfectly, and appliqueing them into place was so simple.

 

I decided to continue with hand work, and hand quilted the mini quilt. I wanted it to have A LOT of texture, and I think I succeeded. =) I did a running stitch following the design of most of the background fabrics. I think this is called seed stitching (google was only half helpful).

I left the pluses unquilted and love how they pop.

The mini quilt finished at 17" square. I used Hobbs 80/20 Batting. It's already at it's new home, and I am currently working on a second which will be turned into a pillow for another friend.

Modern Mini Challenge

Have you heard about the Modern Mini Quilt Challenge hosted by Ellison Lane I missed the last one, but am so excited to participate this time. And it gave me the drive I needed to finally finish my mini Drunk Zebra!

The mini version of the block is included in my Drunk Zebra quilt pattern, you can see photos of the full size version here. {I just realized that I laid this out quite differently than the original. Oops on my part, but a happy surprise. New layout option I suppose, but now I am wondering if that is why the pieces didn't come together exactly right, the angles of the string pieces or very precise which is why it is a paper piecing pattern. I guess I'll be making another one in the near future to check.}

The mini version was definitely a bit more challenging. The wedges are so small, and the strings even smaller, so matching up all those seams was apparently impossible. But hey, it's a little more drunk than the original!

With 9 blocks, this mini quilt finished at 12" square, and has been added to my mini quilt wall.

Thanks so much for stopping by!