Frosty placemats

Here's one of the projects that kept me away from the computer over the last month. These fabrics had been calling my name for a long time but I was a good girl and didn't bring them home until I had a plan for them.  When a customer at the LQS where I work gathered these up and paired them with my Geese Across the Table placemat pattern, I took one look at her stack and knew I had finally found my plan!

It is hard to tell from the picture, but the grey is actually silver metallic, and all the fabrics have silver metallic accents.  You can see the sparkle better in the closeup below.

Sparkling fabric is not usually my thing, but these spoke to me.  Maybe it's because the sparkle is paired with blues.  You know I love blues!

I stitched in the ditch on both the place mats and runner, because really, the gorgeous fabric is doing all the work here!  The binding is machine stitched.  There's a lot of binding in 6 place mats and a runner, and I just did not have the time or inclination to hand stitch that much of it!  

I have some Christmas place settings on my table right now, but come January, my table will be dressed in frosty blues!

I thought my receipt had information about the fabric I could share, but it doesn't.  I'll check next time I'm at the shop and report back.  I'm pretty sure most of the blues are from Timeless Treasures, and the white background is from the Quilter's Linen collection by Robert Kaufman.  And I know Quilting Connection in Ames IA has kits made up and they accept phone orders! (Just note that the kits have a different grey/silver fabric for the accent.)

After working on these I'm in the mood for frost on tree branches and sunlight sparkling on snow.  Right now we have the cold, but not the snow.  I'm sure it will come soon enough, and then I'll be wishing for spring!

December means ornaments

How did a whole month streak past? I could have sworn I posted just a week or two ago, but it has been a whole month.  My lack of posting certainly wasn't for lack of stuff to share.  I've been happily humming along with my sewing machine in the sewing room.  Come to think about it, that pretty much explains the lack of posts.  I can't sew and type at the same time!

I'll share a bit about those 4 finishes and one top over the next couple of weeks, but tonight, while I listen to Christmas music, I'm in the mood to share Christmas ornaments.

Last weekend I enjoyed an afternoon trimming the Christmas tree with my family, and was overwhelmed at the number of ornaments we have.  I remember the first Christmas my husband and I were married, we had a little 2 foot tree and not much to put on it. Money was tight. We bought one box of cheap plastic bulb ornaments, made a popcorn garland, and I made 4 little cinnamon stick baskets.

I didn't sew at the time, but I did know how to crochet, so the next year I found a book of patterns at the library and crocheted some snowflakes, and the tree was little less bare.

I have a list somewhere of what ornaments we added every year.  One year I finished a cross stitched wall hanging instead, and another year the kids assisted in making a felt tree skirt, but there has been something new every year, and I think for all but those 2 years it has been a tree ornament.  The kids contributed most years from preschool through grade school, and occasionally since then as well. One year we made felt mittens, and another we found instructions for the cute felt and Popsicle stick reindeer.

The sand dollars make me think of mom and dad, as we collected those on the beach together.

I found the vintage cookie cutters at the antique mall with my mother-in-law during one of my in-laws' Thanksgiving visits.

There are many more, each with a memory attached.  Most of the store bought ornaments have stories as well.  Yes, we have many ornaments.  Maybe too many.  I really need to stop adding more.

Except that I remember the joy of making something for that little bare tree 26 years ago, and I just can't bring myself to break 26 years of tradition.

Here are this year's additions for our tree.  I need to add some hanging loops still.  You can find Angie's Bits and Piece's video tutorial here if you also feel the urge to add just one more thing to your tree.  (I'll just add that applying a little bit of Fray Check to the edges and points where I needed to take a stitch, before starting, helped a lot.)

My Ridiculously Tiny Ornaments tutorial is also still available for you to download to make some tiny patchwork ornaments.  These are from Christmas 2013, I believe, and are really not as finicky to make as they seem. I blogged about them here. They are a bit addictive though, so be careful!

I'd love to hear the stories your favourite ornaments tell. Please share in the comments. I'll be reading them while munching on Christmas cookies and listening to Christmas music!

Triple Sunset photo shoot

Fall colour didn't last long around here this year.  Leaves seemed to drop almost as soon as they changed colour.  I was glad to get Triple Sunset quilted and bound in time to have a photo shoot with the last of the leaves!

The wind gave us a little bit of trouble, as you can see.  It seemed to pick up every time we unfolded the quilt, without fail, but we still managed to get a few good pictures.

I love this one on the bridge, though it does look a bit like I forgot to quilt whole swaths of the quilt.  That's a bit unfortunate, considering all the hand wringing that went on in the sewing room about how I should quilt it.  I pushed through it and my favourite picture doesn't even show it!

This one is a bit better.  You see those vertical quilted lines up at the top?  There are some of those filling in all the white spaces that are not quilted with diagonal lines.  My original plan was to quilt half the quilt background in one diagonal direction, and the other half in the opposite direction. As I often do, I changed the plan partway through and ended up with the crossing diagonals.  Then I had to decide what to quilt in the rest of the background.  After opting for vertical lines, I quilted one section and hated it.

"Comparison if the thief of joy."

I don't know who first said or wrote that, but I need it on the wall in my sewing space! I had been so sure that this modern design needed very straightforward, clean lines for the quilting. After seeing some gorgeous free motion work online I started thinking about what someone else would have quilted instead and my plan didn't measure up. That is useless path to go down!

After sulking for a few days, I put the walking foot back on my sewing machine and made myself finish what I started. There wasn't any chance that I was going to pick out what I had already stitched, and there was a deadline looming, so I pushed through.

As soon as I put the last stitches in, I knew I had been right after all and I fell in love with the quilt all over again.  The quilt really did want simple lines.  The orange starbursts make me happy and they are the focus here.  The quilting is the supporting cast. Playing with varying orientations for the groups of quilted lines gave it just enough movement. The orange binding finished things off perfectly, but it would have been overwhelmed by dense, fancy quilting bedside it.

Here's a closeup of the outline quilting in and around the stars and geese.

I outline quilted in variegated orange thread inside each shape for several reasons.  It emphasizes each patch.  It brings a touch of tradition to a modern quilt, as many older hand quilted quilts feature outline quilting in patches.  It avoided some bulky spots in the seams where my ruler foot got stuck when I tried stitching in the ditch.  OK, I admit I used the first two reasons to talk myself into outlining when stitching in the ditch turned out to be a pain!  I do, however, love the end result.

It looks pretty cool on the back too.

Again, my vertical lines disappear in the photos!  All the outline quilting was done with a ruler foot and straight edge ruler quilting template. The background was quilted using my trusty walking foot.

One thing you can't see in these pictures, even in the closeup, is the fabric texture.  The top is made entirely with Moda Grunge fabrics, so there's a little bit of texture in real life.  Seeing these pictures I would say solids would be effective as well.

I almost forgot to explain where the quilt's name came from.  When I finalized the design, I asked my astronomer husband if there was a specific astronomical term for star systems composed of three stars.  Apparently it's just a plain old "triple star system". Hmph.  I googled that term to see if it would be linked to something more interesting and I found an article about a planet detected in a three star system.  The title of the article referenced a triple sunset, presumably because the three stars would be like three suns to the planet, and there would be sunset for each.  I rather liked that idea, so I borrowed it for the name of my quilt.

I'll leave you with just one more picture, just because I am enjoying these colours so much!  I'm trying to hold on to fall just a bit longer.