Christmas Candy Dishes

Christmas Candy Dishes

This is the quilt that started with the Layer Cake of Riley Blake Christmas Candy fabric I won at the Blogger's Meet-Up at Quilt Market in May in Salt Lake City.  I searched my local quilt shops for the coordinating fabrics.  (Local here means anything I can get to without needing to pack a lunch) This was a great group of fabrics, especially the pink and lime green for Christmas.

This was my first Dresden Plate block, and I still love the method, even after finishing this group of 16 blocks and two sets of five for Christmas Dishes quilts AND the center plate for the Scandinavian Christmas quilt.  Here you can see the candy details clearly.

The piecing and applique was finished in August, but I didn't blog about the finished quilt because it was destined to be a Christmas gift for my sister.

The quilting was done by Coleen Beutler, whose long-arm machine lives at Village Dry Goods www.villagedrygoods.comquilt shop in Brigham City, Utah.  Coleen did a great job.  There are holly wreaths around each of the plates, and a whole forest of larger trees quilted over the little trees in the borders.

My next project is finishing the design for a wedding quilt for my son, then plunging into the quilts for our spring and summer classes in West Yellowstone.  Here's the (ambitious) list:

Buffalo Gals Baby quilt/wall quilt--needs a new buffalo center so we can publish the pattern
Block of the month Christmas Critters applique quilt designs
Cowboy Pinwheel kids quilt
Prairie Paisley star (?)
Baby Bear Paw in the Send-It-Home shop batiks  (Pati just sent thumbnails of the fabrics.  Gorgeous)
Cabin in the Woods sampler (maybe a block-of-the-month)

I figure if I sew or quilt every day most of this can happen.   I think I'll have to set up a chart with goals for each week.

Pinwheels and Posies Quilt

Full view

One of my young friends started chemo therapy on Thursday.  This is the follow-up to two surgeries just before Christmas.    It is hard to imagine being a young mom and fighting breast cancer.   When we  (Renae Allen and I) learned about the cancer, well, when you don't have a magic wand,  you make a quilt.  The picture isn't great  here, but the detail photos  are okay.  The center applique is from  Blackbird Designs "How Does Your Garden Grow?"  I did the applique and piecing, and Renae quilted it. There are better pictures on Renae's blog. www.rgadesignquilts.blogspot.com

Detail of the applique and quilting

Back view of the quilting

Renae's quilting does a wonderful job of enhancing the design and concealing the vagaries of my piecing. Check Renae's blog for more pictures of this quilt and her other work, and her website for her RGA Designs home machine quilting tools, techniques, and tutorials.  www.rgadesignsquilts.com and www.RGAdesignsquilts.blogspot.com

The Scandinavian Christmas quilt

Honestly, I went to my favorite local quilt shop for a couple of neutral cream and tan fabrics for a stealth quilt I have in my head:  lots of piecing but little color contrast.  Yes, I know that's not my usual style, but when the environment  the proposed quilt will co-star in is very pale, something intricate but also pale is in order.

Or so I thought.  Selecting quiet prints  involved getting into the taupe and tan neighborhood, not my usual section of the color world.  The Lecien "Scandinavian Christmas" fabrics caught my eye, especially the tan with red polka-dot mushrooms, and the taupe with tall houses, feather Christmas Trees, and Father Christmas.

You'll see in my finished blocks that with all the best intentions, I still wound up using red  prints and even deep scarlet flowers in the mix.  So much for a quiet, reserved, even restrained quilt.

Center 

First border corner blocks and photographer's shadow.  Guess who was in a hurry.

Outer border corner blocks

Lovely how all the different manufacturers color palates worked for this quilt.  The center of this star block is the fabulous "Hometowns" fabric from Moda.

So, during the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, I will list many things for which I am grateful, among them Fuji apples, cell phones, a healthy family, good friends, snow on the mountains, life, liberty,  and the pursuit of quilt fabrics.

At the end of the Scandinavian Christmas project I will undoubtedly have a batch of extra tan fabrics.  Hmm.  Sounds like a give-away in the making. Speaking of bits and pieces, I asked several friends for their opinions of, in quilt fabrics, how small is too small a scrap to keep.  We'll delete the names to protect the innocent:

Response 1:  "Don't keep anything smaller than a fat quarter."

Response 2:  "It depends.  Usually I don't keep anything smaller than a two and a half inch square."

Response 3:  "You mean people throw scraps away?"

Send me your response.  In fact, send me your response and I'll put you in a drawing for a fabulous assortment of bits and pieces.  None smaller than 2.5 inches.

Quilts for the table

The Christmas Dishes table quilt, designed  for Village Dry Goods quilt shop in Brigham City, in the shop at last.

Closer view of quilt on table.  

Check the November 15 post for a close-up of the plates.  The story of this quilt is simple.  The Christmas print fabrics are all right by the front door of the shop, with great natural light.  The whimsical elf prints were new, and practically shouted to be taken home and used in a quilt right away.  My applique quilts often take a year, but this one was machine pieced, hand appliqued, and machine quilted in less than a week.   

So, there's the Riley Blake Christmas Candy plate quilt, this table quilt, the sibling of this one done in more formal Christmas fabrics.  Still not bored with Dresden plates!

Village Dry Goods Christmas Table Quilt

Pattern Cover for Village Dry Goods Christmas Table Quilt

I've been having too much fun with the Dresden Plate variations.  As you can see, the first table quilt is finished.  It's on display at the Village Dry Goods shop www.villagedrygoods.com.  Kits with pattern will be available, but the patterns are also for sale separately.

This week I'm making Frog Pants for toddler Mia (her dad's request--at least the pants part.) The fish quilt (Grampa Says I'm a Keeper) is done except for finishing the final stitching of the binding.

September Roses

Hand-pieced roses

This is the quilt I forgot.  While planning for a hand-piecing class, I was digging through a box of single sampler blocks and found this quilt.  Somehow I had completely forgotten it.  Or had I?  Next is am E quilt I designed this week using Moda's new "Sophie" line of fabrics.

Definitely a resemblance, yes?

Sophie's Garden (designed with EQ7 using Moda fabrics)

The Sophie's Garden quilt is a project for later.  Our Sophie is only six months old, and has plenty of bedding. Besides, her mama likes to make quilts too.  On the other hand, the fabrics are beautiful. I could make a dress, but she is still too small to look good in the large florals of this fabric group.  Hmmm.  My local quilt shop, Village Dry Goods www.villagedrygoods.com, has a couple of the large florals, so I have seen them on-the-hoof. Maybe I should add a new quilt category to my scheudle:  quilts that must be made because the combination of fabric name and recipient require it of me.  This one would make a great sampler quilt for a star piecing (hand-piecing) class.

 Quilting Stars?  Maybe we will need t-shirts and tote bags for this group.

Christmas Dishes table quilt

September already?  This afternoon I am quilting the Christmas Dishes table quilt, which is a relief.  This is the first time I've made two quilts at once of the same pattern.  The Heritage Quilt Workshop version is pieced from bits of fabric from my mother's Grandmother's Christmas Quilts stash.  The Village Dry Goods version is for my favorite quilt fabric shop, and is more whimsical  The Dresden Plate design is very satisfying in a scrappy version.  This image is the second I've been able to create since delving into Electric Quilt.  This is going to be so much fun!  I know I still have to write the instructions, but this makes it possible to show you all the designs in my head long before I can get them into fabric.

We had a great time in West Yellowstone last week. It is delightful to get acquainted with new people, and the quilts we're doing this fall are fun to teach.  Check out the schedule and  register on line at
 www.send-it-home.com

This next quilts are the two we are teaching in a single class:  the Wild Mountain Rose quilt followed by  the Baby Bear Paw, which uses the same techniques..  

Wild Mountain Rose

 

Baby Bear Paw