Christmas 2018 finishes

Happy New Year! Everyone still has all their Christmas decorations up, right? Good, because I'm sharing my holiday finishes today.

For the first time in many years, we got on an airplane during the dreaded winter holiday travel season. But the reward for enduring crowded flights filled with sneezing travelers was getting to visit family and friends. I decided to make zipper pouches to give to the folks we were visiting. Nothing big, just small tokens of affection. It was fun to select fabric for each person and quilt up the bags. Sewing with zippers is definitely not my favorite thing, but I feel like I'm getting the hang of it now.

I added a few little suprises inside the bags. This one for my Dad has beer fabrics peeking through the zipper.

This horse bag was given to my Mom, and has music notes inside. She and her husband both sing in choirs, so I put the same fun fabric inside his gift.

A dear friend lost her beautiful tuxedo kitty a few months ago, so I made her a bag with holiday kitties to cheer her up. The little paw prints inside honor the prints our pets leave forever on our hearts.

And speaking of cats, I made this little holiday wall hanging for above our bed. It uses six panels of Debbie Hron fabric. 

The little contented Christmas cats have such sweet faces! The central square is all part of the panel, and I added borders to make a star shape.

My husband really likes this paisley print, so I used up all my scraps of it. The quilting is simple stipples in the borders, SITD around the stars and squares, and outlining of each cat.

The reason I needed a new wall hanging is because this is the first year we've had a Christmas quilt on our bed! Sorry for all the dark photos, but our bedroom is incredibly dark. Our windows are only 8"x18" and the walls are dark wood. Great for sleeping, but lousy for quilt photos.

The wall above the bed usually holds my Postcards from Ikea piece, which is rainbow bright. It didn't look right with Christmas red and green, so Contented Christmas Cats chased a squirrel (or maybe vice versa?) and a more coordinated look was born.

The bed quilt was actually finished months ago during Christmas in July, and put away until December. The flimsy dates back a whole year. I quilted the scrappy cream background with big feathers, and the darker red and green areas with a stipple.

The binding is a black and white stripe, and the quilting in the red border is simple straight lines. After all those feathers, I was kinda done with the quilting to be honest. I should probably do borders first before I run out of steam.

 

The back is solid green fleece, and I used no batting in this piece. We are usually somewhere warm for the winter, so this weight is just right for us.

The fleece shows the shape of quilting really, really well. But it completely hides the individual stitches. The bobbin thread is off white, and you can't see any white at all on the back! Gotta love that thick, forgiving fleece. 

When we return to the boat this week, it will be time to pack up and put away our Christmas decor until next year. Meanwhile, we're enjoying everyone else's holiday lights and trees. I hope you all had a wonderful season. Onward to 2019!

Scrappy Christmas flimsy

We are in St. Petersburg, FL where several of our friends live. We're only here for about a week, so it's been a whirlwind of social visits and fun events. In quiet moments I was able to piece up this Christmas quilt top.

After I finished my tree skirt flimsy last week, I realized I had a lot of holiday-themed scraps. Most were already cut into 2.5" wide strips, so I went looking for a pattern to use them. 

This is a nice freebie from P&B Textiles, called Illustrations. Click here for the free pattern. I liked the offset barn raising layout and how the black and green little squares alternated. On my quilt, I used scrappy black and red for the small squares, and separated my strips into darks and lights. 

Almost all my holiday scraps are fairly dark reds and greens, and I'm happy to say that I was only short about 5 or 6 strips for the entire quilt! I pulled a few greens from my regular scraps and I was all set. My Christmas scraps are completely used up, wahoo!! The lights were the entirely opposite story, though. There might be only 6 light strips that are "holiday" themed (mostly snowflakes) and I had to fill in the entire rest of the quilt from my regular off white and cream scraps. 

I won't get this finished into a quilt this year, but really enjoyed working with all the pretty Christmas fabrics: poinsettias, holly, ornaments, etc. And since all my scraps are now used up and I can shop guilt-free for more holiday fabric in April when it's all on sale. I've learned my lesson, though, and will make sure to also buy plenty of coordinating light shades.

This pattern was a keeper, too. I'm sorry I didn't take photos until the top was finished, but here's a cropped photo showing an individual block. Every block has the identical layout so it's a fast chain piecer for sure. The 12" finished block uses all 2.5" strips and each block ends up half light and half dark, like a pixelated HST. So the blocks can be put together into all the same larger patterns as any HST, not just barn raising. 

Linking up with Oh, Scrap!

Yet another cat quilt finish

Huh. I could have sworn I blogged about this quilt when it was just a flimsy, but I guess I never did. Well, here it is all finished, ta da! The (free!) pattern is "Pins and Paws" from the Missouri Star Quilt Co., a simple block of kitty silhouettes. I'm calling it Pins and Paws and Plenty of Purple.

The border fabric set the color scheme of blues, greens, yellows and purples. 

I quilted it with a feather and swirl motif, using 40 wt yellow thread. Many of the feathers are quite wonky, and of course the wonkiest ones ended up on the dark, contrasting fabrics. Oh well, it was good practice.

The later feathers were smoother as I found a rhythm that worked for my hands. I've been really frustrated by feathers until I gave myself permission to let the lobes be separated and not touching each other. Those "bump back" feathers just don't flow for me!

The backing is yet another piece of the yellow plaid, which hides the yellow thread but lets the texture show. This will be a donation quilt for Project Linus.

 

Angel says feathers are for the birds. She sitting between my two Christmas pillows, and on top of a small Christmas lap quilt that you can't see.

And speaking of Christmas, I pieced this tree skirt flimsy from largish-sized holiday-themed scraps. The (free!) pattern is "Fruitcake Under My Tree" from the Moda Bakeshop. The kind of tree that needs a skirt won't work on our boat, so this will be gift. For someone. But probably not this year. All the smaller scraps from this and other Christmas sewing started whispering my name, so I dropped everything else and have been piecing up a different (free!) pattern using those. More on that later.