Last Post 2022

My final quilt of the year was for my husband. He asked for more quilts to have a backing of "soft warm material", meaning flannel. I decided to use flannel for front and back of the quilt that I made for him as a Christmas gift. 

Since I only had less than two weeks to make this quilt, I decided on a quilt-as-you-go quilt. I also tried a new method that I haven't used in my past quilt-as-you-go quilts.

Blocks were made with batting a quarter inch less all around the block so that when sewing the blocks together only the front fabrics and the back fabrics were sewn together with seam edges on the backside of quilt. My blocks were 10" with batting 9".

Top of quilt has no sashing. Blocks are sewn together. 

After sewing a couple of rows together, I felt the front of the quilt was boring and needed something else. While taking a break from the quilt, I noticed some of my outside plants with red petals were still in bloom in December. I decided to add a red flower to the quilt top. 

I played around with the placement of the flower petals before machine stitching them down.

I decided to change up my method of binding the quilt since all the material is flannel. I used a cotton fabric as a flange to act as a stabilizer for the binding. 

The yellow sashing hides the seam edges on the backside of the quilt. I didn't worry about making the plaid squares line up. That would have been a nightmare for me!  I normally wouldn't have picked a plaid, but it was the only patterned fabric that had the colors as the front fabrics that I liked. My husband was happy to get a quilt with "soft warm material" on front and back of quilt. He will stay warm under his quilt during the cold winter nights while watching tv on our comfy sofa.

A Southwestern Vibe

Back in May, my son visited me with 4 bags of tee shirts from his years in college. A couple of tee shirts were from his high school years. He asked me if I would be interested in making him another quilt and again use some of the tee shirts for the back design. Time went by, he had moved to Phoenix, and daughter's wedding events were now in the past. 

I was in the mood of doing another Delectable Mountain pattern, but I wanted to change it up to look like lanterns. Since my son was now living in the Southwest, I picked colors that have a Southwestern feel: green for the cacti, blue for the sky, and oranges for the earth. He enjoys playing his electric guitar; so, I used a blue fabric with electric guitar motif for the lanterns. 

I decided to use a nontraditional approach for piecing the tee shirts.

I surprised him at Christmas with the quilt. He had thought I had forgotten about the tee shirts. He loved the Southwestern vibe and was totally surprised that I had completed the quilt this year.

Long Overdue Christmas Quilt

For the last 4 years, I have wanted to make another Christmas quilt. This year I set a goal to get it done! I had some saved fabrics for this project from past years, but I needed a couple more yards to make a good size lap size quilt (65x65).

I enjoy watching Jordan's Youtube videos from Jordan's Fabrics. She had recently posted a video with this design. It isn't her pattern; so, she couldn't post the directions. She just showed how to assemble. 

After looking at a couple of assembled blocks, I figured out a general idea of the dimensions of the quilt blocks. 

I changed the color of the small squares and the corners' color from what was suggested. I wanted to bring in more red throughout the quilt. 

I decided to just quilt on one side of the seams to form rows.

I wanted to add a binding with a flange to this quilt to carry the white out to the binding, but have the white not overly dominating. 

Stitching in the ditch of the flange and binding to stitch down the binding.

Stitching this way was easy to do and gave me the look that I wanted for this quilt. The binding fabric (green) is 1 3/4 inch wide, and the flange (white) is 2 1/2 inches wide. 

I incorporated some of the leftover strips meant for the front quilt blocks to the back of the quilt to make the back of quilt more interesting.  
 

It's Beginning To Look Like Christmas

My daughter asked for a decorative Christmas Tree ornament similar to one my mother made for me decades ago. It's a 5 inch stuffed felt pine tree with bead work to represent ornaments on a Christmas tree. Instead, I'm surprising her with a different one, a quilted tree. 

I followed Jordan Fabric's Christmas tree pattern for assembling the tree and border. Blocks were sewn into rows. I then decided to make this project into a quilt-as-you-go.

The batting was set up for assembling the rows together by using the quilt-as-you-go method.

Once the rows were all sewn down, I then added a flange before adding the border. 

Buttons and beads are the final touch. The beads are from my mother's bead stash and the buttons I found.