"Nicole's Challenge" 20 Fabric Quilt from Bits 'n Pieces Quilt Shoppe

Every couple weeks, Bits ‘n Pieces Quilt Shoppe in Pelham, New Hampshire, does a live Comment Sold sales event on Facebook. 6 weeks ago they were selling stacks of twenty 7 inch wide fabric strips. I think they had originally be cut and sold to be used to make face masks. Anyway, it was time to move them along, so they were on sale.

Off the cuff, someone suggested that the bundles could be used to create a quilt challenge. Nicole, one of the shop’s staff members, took up the challenge and on the spot, ans off the cuff, came up with “Nicole’s Challenge” 20 Fabric Quilt.

Here are the rules.

• Each of the 20 fabrics in the bundle you purchased had to be used in the quilt. You didn’t need to use up every bit of the fabrics they sent, but at least a patch of each fabric had to be in the completed quilt top. (The bundles weren’t all the same, but they chose the bundle for you).

• Supplemental fabrics could be added. (I added 10 extra fabrics).

• It quilt could be any size and any pattern.

• The top, with a brief description, had to be completed and submitted via e-mail by April 11. That gave the entrants 6 weeks to sew. The quilt did NOT have be finished.

• Voting for the winners is open to anyone visiting the Bits ‘ Pieces their Facebook page from the time the entries are uploaded until the winning quilts are announced on April 25th, 2021. Nicole promises there will be prizes!

For the most part, I really liked the 20 fabrics in my bundle. But I did find the fluorescent pixel fabric and it’s coordinating palm tree fabric to be rather challenging—especially the pixel fabric! I did use the pixel fabric twice, but there isn’t much of it! Still, that met the brief.

I used the pattern “Autumn Flight” by Beth Vassalo from the Lucky Spool book Scraps, Inc., Vol. 1 as my inspiration. (This 2014 book is available as a digital download from Lucky Spool or still can be found as a paperback from Amazon.

I used Beth Vassalo’s idea of flying geese and plain blocks in strips. Beth used an alternative method to make her flying geese blocks and staggered them so they aren’t flying exactly in a straight line, while I used a couple quilting flying geese rulers to make traditional flying geese blocks. I also added 3 square-in-a-square economy blocks in 2 of the block strips in the quilt. So, this quilt is my own variation, but it is definitely styled on the quilt design in the book.

All 20 fabrics, plus a number of added coordinating fabrics, were incorporated into the quilt top. And just for good measure, I made the binding with all 20 fabrics too! (The eagle eye will note that that pesky pixel fabric got short shrift in the binding as well as in the quilt!! I used the pixel fabric as the last fabric in my binding. I didn’t need the full 9 inch length of that section when I came to the end of the binding and I’ll admit, I was happy to cut it short!)

I did all the quilting with my walking foot. There is echo quilting around the flying geese and the economy blocks, and lines of quilting spaced in a variety of distances, from 1/2 to 1/8 inch, across the vertical width of the longer plain blocks.

I loved the open-ended nature of this challenge. With the only constraints being needing to use a bit of all the fabrics and completing in time, that allowed lot of freedom for the quilt’s design and execution.

If you are reading this post before April 25th, 2021, Head over to the Bits ‘n Pieces Facebook page to see all the other entries for “Nicole’s Challenge'‘ and vote for your favorite!

Below are 19 of the 20 fabrics in my bundle. The one that is missing from the photo is the fabric with the yellow sloths in row 2 of the quilt photo above.

"Gnomes Spring Laundry Day" Quilt completed

“Gnomes Spring Laundry Day” quilt is done! This was a fun project! (You can click back on my posts on March 4, 2021 and March 11, 2021 for more information about how I designed and pieced the quilt).

Here’s how I quilted it. I did echo quilting around the square-in-a-square Economy blocks and around the trees. There is linear stitching in the yellow and orange bars. I used the #4 lingerie stitch on my Bernina 440 across the strips with the hanging laundry. Stretched out, the #4 stitch creates a wavy line that reminds me of a spring breeze.

Then I switched from using my walking foot and did free-motion zig-zags across the trees to look like branches of a pine tree. The zig-zags are different on all the trees, because no two trees are ever alike!

Around the back is a garden full of busy gnomes!

Note to the knitters out there who might be having a melt down the hand knit mittens hanging on the line in these photos: the mittens are dry (not recently washed and wet) and they are there just there as a prop in my photo because I couldn’t resist echoing the laundry line in the fabric! So not to worry. (And yes to your second question, I did knit the mittens, sometime way back when I was in a knitting-mitten phase)!

Peg Doll Chicks and Rabbits

Time for some Spring Friends! Chicks and rabbits!

These are tiny friends. The chicks are 1 3/8 inch peg boys and the rabbits are 1 3/4 inch peg boys. The design is my own and they are easy to make.

First paint the pegs the colors you want them to be and seal them with beeswax polish.

Using wool felt, cut out yellow wings for the chicks and brown ears and pink centers for the rabbits. I felted the pink centers to the ears but they could be glued onto the ears as well. (Gluing is probably the way to go if a child is making these pegs as these pieces are tiny and the felting needles are oh so sharp)!

I made the rabbit tails from tiny balls of wool roving but a tail cut from white felt would work just as well.

Using a craft glue, attach the wings to the chicks and the tail and ears to the rabbits. I found the rabbit ears look best when glued to the back of the head, rather than on each side.

Finally I used markers to draw eyes, beak and feet on the chicks and eyes, nose and mouth on the rabbits.

Happy Spring!

DYI Easter Basket Made From Recycled Shipping Supplies: A Tutorial

Last week I received a package from Target with some fragile items which were wrapped protectively with honeycomb shipping material. And the next day I got a package with crinkle cut paper used to keep the items from shifting around in the box. I’d saved the honeycomb paper because it intrigued me. Now I had two items which looked like they would play well together. The wheels in my grey matter started to spin!

Shipping supplies

The honeycomb packing reminded me of a bird’s nest. I thought about cutting it in strips and braiding it. Doable, but seriously, way too complicated. When I picked up the paper and starting handling it, I realized that simple folding would get me what I wanted.

Here’s how you can make your own basket.

Making a Paper Bird’s Nest

1. Cut a strip of honeycomb shipping material about 2 1/2 wide and about 12 inches long. It’s better to be generous in the length, as you can easily cut it down if it’s too long.

2. Crimp one edge of the honeycomb paper strip.

3. Start to work into a circle. Once you have part of the circle formed, anchor it with a staple.

4. Continue folding until you have created a full circle. You will need to add about 2 more staples to create the basket.

5. Trim the strip of honeycomb paper so that it is about 1 1/2 inches longer than the diameter of the basket. Fold the end of the paper. Tuck the leading edge of your basket behind the paper you ended with.

6. Apply a couple dabs of craft glue to the inside edge of the front edge fold and a bit to both papers where they overlap. Hold tight until the glue sets.

7. Gently mold the paper to form a nice round nest. It’s fine to slightly stretch and pull up the sides of the nest to even out the depth.

8. Add the crinkle cut paper and your eggs. I used painted wooden eggs (these are tiny and NOT safe for a small child) but candy eggs would be perfect too.

I also made a deeper basket using a 3 inch wide strip which has a 4 inch diameter. It will hold a hen’s egg easily, maybe two. The one in the photo below is a hen-size painted wooden egg. it works but the nest isn’t very sturdy and I think using it for jelly beans is a better idea!

Notice: This blog is not monetized: I do not use affiliate links. When there are links in a post, they are to give credit to another creative person, because I like or have used a product, or to help the reader easily find supplies for a project.

Waldorf Doll, 18 inch "Molly Mae"

This is a good story. I took a few days off from quilting at the end of February to make myself a new Waldorf Doll.

For a while I owned a Bamboletta Forever Friend. She was a lovely doll, but that particular style of Waldorf Doll is just too gangly for me. Seems like they are all arms and legs. That’s just me. However, I had made that doll a wardrobe of beautiful dresses. When I re-homed her, I kept the clothes, even though I no longer had a doll they fit.

So the task at hand was to make a new Waldorf doll who could wear the clothes! Sort of backwards, but there it is. I knew the pattern for the classic Waldorf doll in Maricristin Sealey’s Book Making Waldorf Dolls had the right size torso for the dresses. It that doll just wasn’t long/tall enough and it’s legs are forward facing and don’t have feet. So I altered that pattern taking some ideas from the Olga/Ollie Doll in Karin Neuschütz’s book, Sewing Dolls and drafted a new pattern for a lean 18 inch doll with actual feet.

This doll is definitely not gangly!! In fact, I had to go back and resew both her arms and legs to make them a bit leaner. If I ever make another doll using this pattern, I’ll shorten the arms a bit and lengthen the legs about half an inch.

The pupil in each eye, a French knot, is a new feature for me. I think I like the pupils, but still not positive about them!.

Anyway, designing a new pattern for this doll was a really fun challenge I’m really happy with this new doll.

"Gnomes Spring Laundry Day" Quilt, continued

Here are the basic blocks in my “Gnomes Spring Laundry Day” quilt. The Square in a Square block and the Tree with 2 Bars both finish at 8 inches square. The laundry on the line strip is the width of fabric x and will finish at 4 inches wide.

I used Electric Quilt 8 to design the quilt. (See my previous post). The tree in the right hand block looked like it was going to be easy…except it wasn’t! EQ8 provides 3 directions for 3 ways to make blocks—rotary cutting, cutting templates and foundation piecing. This is the first time I have used all three to make a block.

I usually pick the rotary cutting option. But this time it asked me to cut the tree with 66 degree angles at the base. Right. 60 degrees would be a piece of cake. In fact I have a stack of rulers which can do that easily. My next idea was try altering the block so I could cut it with the Tri Recs rulers. It was a great idea. I found the Tri Rec instruction sheet in my box of specialty rulers but the rulers themselves were not to be found in any of the usual places. So that wasn’t going to work.

It was down to printing the foundation patterns or cutting a template for the tree. I did print the pattern but it looked like I would be wasting a lot of fabric with the foundation piecing.

So here’s what I did. I cut a template for the tree using template plastic and used the rotary cutting instructions for the tree trunk, the light blue patches in the block and the yellow and orange bars.

I’ve learned that it is a good idea to make a single block to check the instructions before cutting all the pieces. Unfortunately, I have found math errors in the EQ8 cutting instructions twice recently. In the tree block it said to cut the trunk 1 7/8 inches. It should have read 1 5/8 inches. Since I had printed the foundation piecing pattern used that to check the measurements of all the pieces using that block. It can easily be done in the computer program or you can also just the print block option in the EQ8 program (See below).

I never had any problems with the measurements in the cutting instruction in EQ8 in the past. The first time it happened a few weeks ago, I thought it was just a fluke. Both times the instructions were 1/4 inch too large. Having had had it happen twice, I recommend using the print block option and checking the finished measurements carefully before you cut all your fabric.

This is the quilt block I modified, printed from EQ8. (It’s not to scale, so you won’t be able to use it).

So, the tree was a challenge. But doable with a variety of cutting methods. Off now to cut all the fabric for the quilt.

"Gnomes Spring Laundry Day" Quilt Project

These two fabrics from the “Winter Gnomes” line by Striped Pear Studio for Windham Fabrics just had to go into my online shopping cart a few months ago. I had no idea what I was going to do with them, but they made me giggle. That was justification enough!

Then a few weeks ago, I saw this gnome fabric from Timeless Treasures, “Gnome Worry, Be Happy.” While from a different fabric company, the colors in the three fabrics are all similar and work well together. This fabric suddenly bumped a gnome quilt up to the top of my stack of projects!

So I had fabrics with gnome winter clothes and another with gnomes doing spring planting. Clearly they had washed their woolies, hung them on the line and started to work waking up the garden!

I actually purchased the “Gnome Worry, Be Happy” fabric for the back of the quilt. But those gnomes, you just never know what mischief they might be up to.

Here’s the quilt I designed in Electric Quilt 8. It is the classic Economy Block (a square in a square) and a tree block. I took the “Big and Little Trees” block from the EQ8 block library and modified it, removing the smaller of the trees and replacing it with two narrow strip patches.

“Gnomes Spring Laundry Day” quilt design

Now that I have a plan and a quilt pattern, I need to get busy!

"Summer Nights" Firefly Quilt

Here is my finished “Summer Nights” firefly quilt! (Clearly it isn’t summer here at the moment)!! The firefly fabric is from the “Let Your Light Shine” line by Blank Fabric Corporation. The information about how to make this quilt is in my previous post.

It’s a small lap quilt, 38 1/2 x 48 inches. The quilting is straight line, 1/8 inch, just to the right of the blocks, following the grid of the quilt. There is one yellow “light” block with a free-motion quilted initial of the child to whom this quilt will belong.

Here is the quilt’s label. I incorporated the fabric’s name from selvedge in the label.

Quilt label, with a message of encouragement!

The bright-lights-in-the-night theme is carried on in the backing fabric.

Starry backing fabric

This was a fun project which I especially enjoyed making. And it comes with a little secret which won’t be evident until the light are out—the fireflies fabrics are glow-in-the-dark! Best surprise ever!!

"Summer Nights" Firefly Quilt Design

This is the quilt fabric I am so excited to show you. The two feature firefly fabrics are from the “Let Your Light Shine” line from Blank Quilting Corporation. Fireflies! They remind me so much of summer nights.

I wanted to make an easy quilt so I designed this Four Patch variation. There is a little light shining in The corner of one of the firefly-in-the-bushes blocks.

The 4 patch blocks are cut 5 1/2 inches square. The variation block has an inset cut at 1 1/2 inch square with a 4 1/2 x 1 1/2 inch strip. These two patches are sewn together and then f set into a block which is cut 4 1/2 inches x 5 1/2 inches. It’s that simple!

Here is the quilt design I created in Electric Quilt 8.

“Summer Nights” Firefly Quilt Design

In my next post I’ll show you the finished quilt.

"Regatta" Mystery Quilt Project by Merry Mayhem

Our quilt guild purchased a license for Mary Mayhem’s “Regatta” Mystery quilt. So while we aren’t having meetings due to the COVID-19 pandemic, members of our group are stitching up this mystery quilt at home. (You can also purchase a digital copy for your own personal use).

It calls for light blue and bright 5 inch squares of fabric. I sometimes cut 5 inch squares from scraps of fabric after a project and save them in a bin with with other pre-cuts. So some of my 5 inch squares are from this stash and others are commerical pre-cuts which I had in my stash. I had to purchase the light blues because my bin of stashed blue fabrics has been pretty much depleted.

“Shoreline Stories” by Hoffman

With a quilt named “Regatta”, I decided it was very likely that the finished quilt will look like a harbor on race day! So when I saw this digitally printed fabric, “Sea-Breeze”, Part of the Shoreline Stories fabric line by Hoffman I just went ahead and ordered the fabric. This print of a watercolor is much more stunning in real-life. I will need to piece the back, but I expect to have left over light blue fabric so that won’t be a problem. (Unlike many of the stashed fabrics I use, this line of fabric is new and is currently available in shops).

This is the first time I’ve ever made a mystery quilt which has been made before. It’s not a brand new pattern. Typically I’ve signed up to make mysteries which truly are a mystery. You can’t cheat and google anything, so you really don’t know what you are making until the final steps. It turns out one of my guild friends has made this quilt once before. Without asking her to give the completed quilt design away, she did confirm that the finished quilt has what do look like sailboats.

So far so good! This is going to be fun! I hope I like the riot of colors I’ve assembled!

Because this is a licensed mystery quilt, I’m not going to post the steps as I sew them. So the next time you’ll see it, it will be the completed quilt. Since the steps are being distributed once a month, that will probably be sometime late spring or early summer.

In the meantime, I have another quilt project that I can’t wait to show you!

"Breezy Day" Star & Half-Square Triangle Quilt

Here it is—my “Breezy Day” lap quilt. The name was inspired by the fabric in the quilt, rather than the quilt’s design. IF I’d gone with the quilt design, it might have been “Stars on the Stairs”. At least, that what it looks like to me!

There is straight line quilting along the long white diagonals—just under the “stairs” as it were! The quilting starts at 1/2 inch between the lines of stitching, decreases to 1/4 inch and then 1/8 inch “match stick” over 6 rows of stitching. It will create great texture to the quilt once it has been washed.

I had a hard time deciding what to do with the large half square triangle blocks. The diagonal stitches run through the light side of the half square triangle block, but there was still a large section of the block without any quilting. The floral fabric design is so organic, that I didn’t want all the quilting be be straight line.

If finally decided to go with a free-motion quilted large spiral in the dark green block and echo that with a 1 inch spiral in the light half of the block. I love it!

Spiral Free-motion quilting and match stick straight line quilting

I did a stitch-in-the-ditch with my walking foot around each of the stars. I started in one corner of the central square, stitched around the square and then around the star points. This made it possible to quilt the entire star without stopping until it was completed quilted. This works on a small quilt with my domestic sewing machine but would be a struggle with a large quilt. On a large quilt, it would be better done free-motion or on a long-arm machine.

The fabric on the back of the quilt is an irregular linear grid design which I think is a perfect complement to the organic floral design fabric on the front of the quilt.

So that’s it—a lap quilt from design to completion.

Bringing a New Quilt Design to Life

If I were a teacher, and if my post last week was multiple choice test, my students would on a rant today! That post is about a quilt pattern I was designing. I showed 4 variations, and thought the 4th design was the one I was I’d chosen to make. Turns out the final design was not a, b, c, or d, but e—”none of the above”. Uh-oh!! That wasn’t even listed as an option last week—but it has to always be a possibility in the creative process.

When I started sewing the star blocks, I realized that the flowers were facing north, south, east and west. I put my blocks up on my design wall and tried several variations, taking snap shots of each.

After looking at my snap shots, I decided have the flowers in the large half square triangle blocks, face north and south. So now the design doesn’t have a designated top and bottom—it looks the same from both ends of the quilt. This might not work with a fabric design that was bolder, but I think it’s just fine with the dainty little flowers.

I still have borders to add the to quilt top. I was racing to finish sewing the main blocks in the top so I could get a photograph for this post before a snow storm arrived. So you’re seeing what I’ve sewn so far. (And yes, the snow and dusk both arrived just an hour after I took the picture).

Coming Up With A Quilt Design using Electric Quilt 8

I thought I’d show you my work process in designing a quilt pattern in the program Electric Quilt 8 (EQ8).

I have a feature fabric in greens and teals with a fairly large design. Two of the three fabrics for this quilt are directional (blossom at the top, stems at the bottom). So both the size of the print and the direction of the design need to be considered in the quilt’s design.

Left and middle fabrics are directional, the right hand one is not.

I started out thinking I wanted to make a quilt with 9 patches. But hunting through the block library on EQ8 my eye was drawn to the eight pointed star above. It’s called EQ Default Variable Star. That large central square would really be able to feature the large teal, yellow-green, lavender and orange fabric. So I put that block on my design table.

I still wanted to have some a block that would travel linearly through the pattern. So I chose the simple large half square triangle as my second block.

Well, okay. That works. But I still wanted to see if I could design a quilt with a chaining block. So below is trial number number 2.

Quilt Design #2

I kept the 8 pointed star and added the LeMoyne Single Irish Chain. The chaining is interrupted by a larger central square which I thought be be great for my large feature fabric. I like the idea, and the way the chains bring the eye to the star block. But as I sat and looked at the design, I realized it has an irritating flaw. Can you see what it is?

The squares in the center of the star block and the center of the LeMoyne block are different sizes. It just looks wrong. I thought about redesigning one of the blocks, but wasn’t in the mood to fiddle around with it.

So on to design number 3.

Quilt Design #3

I switched out the LeMoyne Single Irish Chain block for a Double Four Patch Block. That creates a chain that flows in one direction across that quilt. This definitely works.

But I was out of time for the day, so I saved my designs in the program’s Project Sketchbook and called it a day.

My folks had a policy of always looking at a piece of artwork on two different days to be sure they really liked it before they bought it. Something that looks good on an initial impression may not be as great looking at it again. I have no idea how many times they walked away and left something on second look. It would have be fun to know.

I tell you this story because my decision about which design to choose was different when I came back to my work table on another day. Number 2 was still out of the running due to the different size squares in the design. When I finished up the first day, Number 3 was my favorite. It’s a good design and I’m keeping it for another time.

But I ended up choosing design Number 1. Of the 3 designs, it is really going to showcase my large feature fabric. However, I needed to change the layout of the half square triangle blocks in order to keep the flowers on the white fabric upright. I didn’t have enough fabric to have all the half square triangles in the same orientation. But one of the awesome things about EQ8 is that you can rotate the blocks anyway you want. So after a few trials, here’s what I think the quilt will look like.

I think it is going be fun to do some diagonal quilting across the entire quilt.

So there you have it! Quilt Design #1 Variation B is going to the cutting table!

Knitting a "Look Out! Winter Hat"

Every once in a while you have a moment of pure serendipity. A few weeks ago I decided I wanted a new winter hat. I dug around in my small yarn stash and found I had a full skein of worsted weight wool yarn. Then I went to see which size needles I had that matched in a circular 16 inch and straight needles. I found a set of US size 7. (Though later I found a set of US 6 needles too).

Then I went to Ravelry.com to see if I could find a pattern I liked using US size 7 needles and worsted weight yarn.

After a bit of perusing, I came upon this “Look Out! Winter Hat” designed by Roberta Rich, from just this past year 2020. I liked that it covers the ears—the ear sections actually curve around and hug your ears! And I loved her introduction that states this hat is great for “kids on the playground to adults who wear hardhats”! This hat is awesome!

The hat’s border is knit a flat piece first and then you pick up stitches to knit the crown. The crown can be worked in the round or flat and sewn together at the end. So it’s a really versatile pattern.

The hats pictured on the pattern were either striped or a solid color. I had some yarn odds and ends so just did an improvisation design on the crown, without making myself a stitch pattern.

The pattern itself is great. I was initially baffled by the wrong side row instructions which tell you to slip the last 3 stitches in the row. I did that and found I had a loose chain forming. I knew that couldn’t be right. So I tried again and discovered the it works perfectly if you slip two stitches as if to purl and actually purl the the last stitch. It’s those slipped stitches which create the beautiful edging on the hat.

I don’t like have the loops of my face masks around my ears, so have sewn big buttons on my hats and slip the mask loops around the buttons. It works very nicely.

I sewed the buttons on with a square of fleece on the back to keep the knitting from getting pulled out of shape. I need to move the buttons up and back a bit now—as I’ve worn the hat, it has settled down on my head more. But that’s an easy fix.

The pattern on Raverly for this hat is free, but Roberta suggests that you knit a few of these hats for a local elementary school. This is a great idea. And it’s perfect for me. I volunteer at Rose’s Bounty Food Pantry and we have a food program for children at a school in one of the other neighborhoods in Boston. We provide food once a week, but we also knit them hats and mittens and we’ve sponsored a new coat drive for the past two years for the children’s in our food pantry program. I only have worsted wool yarn in my stash and as a kid I wouldn’t have worn a wool hat. So I’ve some acrylic yarn which should be here soon.

Hat from the front

If you are looking for a hat pattern that will keep your ears warm, give this pattern a try! I think it is great!

Quilt-in-a-Box Completed Quilt Top

Back in November I told you about our guild’s 2019-2020 Quilt-in-a-Box project. Here, finally, is the quilt top with all the blocks that quilt members made with the fabrics in my box.

I pulled the yellow leaf print from my stash. It had been there for years—clearly just waiting for this project. The yellow really is cheerful and somehow ties it together perfectly.

I have some solid bright yellow fabric which I might use for the backing. But I’m still thinking about that.

I’m so pleased with how this quilt turned out!

Our guild still isn’t meeting due to the pandemic, but were are starting a mystery quilt. Stay tuned. I think there I might be seeing some sails on the horizon!

Gnome Improv Quilt

Last finish for 2020! This is my gnome improvisational quilt.

I was given one yard of the gnome fabric by a friend earlier this year. I purchased the white on white snowflake fabric, the hot pink star fabric,the binding and the backing, but I think everything else came out of my stash.

I fussy cut out as many gnomes as I could, and then started sewing on scraps and other pieces of fabric which I cut to fit. Sometimes I sew slabs—12 x 12 inch improv blocks to make a improv quilt. I started to do that with this one, bur realized it was going to be a full size quilt…and that wasn’t what I wanted. So instead I took the blocks I’d started and turned them into sections which I sewed into strips in a variety of widths. The quilt turned out to be exactly the size of a crib batting. I hadn’t planned it out, but that was just perfect!

The back of the quilt is a flannel plaid.

The Gnome Improv quilt is quilted with a mix of swirls on the white snowflake blocks and meandering or loops on of the rest of the quilt.

The gnome on the label is wearing a mask made from the selvedge of the gnome fabric! It is 2020 after all!

Happy New Year!!

Batik Christmas Ornament Quilt

Every other Thursday evening at 6:00PM EST, Bits ‘n Pieces Quilt Shop in Pelham, NH has a live on-line sale on Facebook. The blue and white ornament batik, the dark blue and the white on white snowflake fabrics were a set of fabrics I purchased up on one of these sales. (I added the green accent on the front and used the same green for the back).

I had so much fun with the “Four Patch for the Fourth” quilt pattern I designed, that used it again for this lap Christmas lap quilt. It works up really quickly and I like the design.

I had quite a bit of fabric leftover after I finished piecing this quilt, so I went back to my EQ8 quilt program and tweaked the design for the next time! That’s one of the great thing about designing quilts on a computer!

Instead of the diagonal quilting I did in the Fourth of July quilt, I echoed the squares in the design. I like it both ways!

Lilliebelle, a newborn size Waldorf type Doll I made earlier this year, is enjoying this quilt in the rocking chair.

If you celebrate, Merry Christmas! Hope you have a lovely time with friends and family this year!

"Waldorf Dangly Dell" Doll, from a Little Oke Dolls Pattern

A few months ago, I decided I wanted to make a Waldorf doll that was safe enough to give to an infant. That meant no soft stuffing in the body which might present a suffocation risk. I thought about designing a pattern but then decided to see if there were some good patterns out there. This “Waldorf Dangly Dell” pattern by Little Oke Dolls which I found on Etsy.com was my favorite!

The doll has the typical tightly rolled wool roving head, and just a bit of stuffing in the hands and feet. The arms, legs and torso of the doll are empty. That meet my safety criteria!

The doll is well named…it really is dangly!

Here’s the first Dangly Dell I made, earlier this year. Her feet are gathered, but they don’t have any stuffing in them, which is what the pattern specifies.

This Waldorf dolls make great baby presents and are quite easy to make. The pattern is excellent and fully illustrated. If you’ve never made a Waldorf doll, but have always wanted to, this is a great pattern to start with.

Forest Animals Winter/Holiday Quilt

The forest animals are getting ready for the Winter Solstice! You can see how low the sun is in the sky in this photo taken mid-morning!

This was a quilt kit I picked up on sale. It is a past season fabric designed by Cori Dantini call “Winter News” from Blend Fabrics. The pattern is their Menagerie Quilt Pattern which can be used with other Blend Fabric designs. The kit had all the fabric needed to make the quilt, including backing and binding. That’s fairly unusual. All I had to add was the batting. Except….I modified the pattern and substituted the solid light green for the grey branch and berry fabric seen in the center row sashing. It’s beautiful fabric but just a bit too grey for me at this time of year!

I also deleted the top and bottom border on the quilt, making my quilt linear, with a more modern feel.

The backing is a wood-grain fabric. There were 3 yards of fabric in the quilt, plenty to make the back. But the wood grain would have being horizontal and I wanted it to be vertical. So I added a strip of left over animal fabric to make the backing wide enough, and I have enough food grain fabric left to back another little quilt. That’s a win-win!

You can see the wood grain backing here in the lower left corner.

Here’s a close up the fabric. Look carefully in the light blue fabric to see some forest animals hiding in the underbrush! So much fun!

"Tula's True Colors" Completed Charm Squares with Circles Quilt

I posted this quilt top made with two 5 inch charm packs of “Tula’s True Colors” by Free Spirit Fabrics back on August 20th. Here, finally, is the finished quilt. It sat on the shelf for quite a while as I thought about how to do the quilting.

One option was to quilt concentric circles around each of the circles on the quilt. Eventually the circles would intersect, like ripples in a pond. (Click this lint to see this in the quilting on my “Portholes” quilt). This quilt is small enough that it would be doable, but my appliqued circles patches just aren’t picture perfect, so I couldn’t justify all the hours of quilting that would take.

I ended up quilting down the rows, just next to the seam in a row, and then sewing around the circle if there was in the row I was stitching. It was like driving in a road with a rotary….sew straight until you reach the circle, sew half way around that circle and then sew on out when you’ve reached the seam straight across from the seam you’d be sewing on.

It’s a bit hard to see, but there is one row of quilting around the left side of this circle and two rows around the right side.

Where the circles didn’t intersect a seam I simple sewed around the circle, about 1/8 inch from the appliqued circle edge.

This quilt is just so cheerful. And I love Tula Pink’s “Fairy Dust” design in the “Whisper” colorway from this line on the back of the quilt…you can see it peaking out in the photo above, with the sparrows flying among the tiny stars. It’s probably my favorite design in this line.