The Ugly Christmas Sweater

Kerry Goulder of Kid Giddy designed the cutest paper pieced pattern for a Christmas sweater block. I fell in love with it. You can find it in her etsy shop here.

I have this little scrap of fabric that I have been hoarding. It's one of my favorite Christmas prints, solely because it always makes me laugh when I see it.

Presenting Blowfish Santa and his motley crew of red and green reindeer fish.

Kim of Persimon Dreams is having an ugly Christmas sweater contest. Whether this is a winner of the contest or not, I sure do love this block. I'm going to be making many more throughout the year so next year there will be a whole quilt full of Christmas sweaters!

Friday Finish, 12/18/15: Just Point Me in the Right Direction

This quilt has been finished for quite a few months, but I don't think I ever posted anything about it.

So there is an independent clothing store in Fresno, with this logo.

One day, as a personal challenge, I decided to make a quilt with just the word "up." I like the word itself juxtaposed with arrows going both up and down. Thus the name: Just Point Me in the Right Direction.

With so much negative space, it required lots of really fabulous quilting. And of course, I can always count on Darby. She did a beautiful job of custom quilting in all that white space.

This is a departure from my usual style, and it is unlikely that this quilt will be hanging on the wall in our home. It was more of a personal challenge.

But then it crossed my mind that it might have a tiny chance of being accepted for QuiltCon 2016. Last year I only submitted one quilt and it was not selected. "Not selected" sounds so much better than "rejected," don't you think? Especially when you see the many superb quilts which have not been selected for the upcoming show. 

Anyway, I received an email the other day with the judges asking to see a photo of the inspiration, as they thought it might be "too derivative." After sending them the above photo, it was indeed deemed too derivative and would not be accepted into the show without written permission by the owner of the store, who owned the rights to the logo.

Yikes! I know this is getting wordy. But condensed version: I went to the store in the morning and as I kind of anticipated, there was a language barrier. The man behind the counter didn't seem to understand my request.  Mark went back with me later in the evening, when another employee was at the store, who was able to translate my request. Ultimately it turned out that the person behind the counter was indeed the owner. He eventually signed a release form for submitting a quilt which had copied his store logo.

Nevertheless, I was still shocked to receive an acceptance letter, not only for this quilt, but also two others: Delta Breeze and I've Got Your Back (I actually submitted the back of the Bullseye quilt rather than the front!). 

I also have another small finish. I had these kits for ornaments made from zippers. The other night I plugged in my hot glue gun, and after lots of finger contact with super hot glue (ouch!), here is the result. The pattern gives the option of sewing or gluing. Were I to ever do this again, I think a needle and thread would be the way to go. But still, burned fingers aside, I think they are super cute. And I'm hoping the grandkids don't really notice some stray glue clumps here and there...

I'm linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts, TGIFF, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, and Fort Worth Fabric Studio. Enjoy your last week before Christmas!

Friday Finish: Have Yourself a Quilty Christmas

Last year at this time, Lori Holt (@beelori1) started an Instagram quilt-along. I initially resisted. And then jumped on the bandwagon. I'm sure glad I did. The blocks were so much fun to make!

I started with the mittens block, because who resist the cute knitted-looking fabric, right?

Then I continued making the blocks as Lori released them every few days.  It was fun to style the pictures too.

After all the blocks were completed and sewn together, it was time for a decision on how large to make the quilt. Lots of people followed Lori's example and added a patchwork border. But still the quilt was fairly small. I wanted it to be large enough for snuggling.

The perfect border fabric was found in my stash (Flurry by Kate Spain).

I added another border of Fairy Frost by Michael Miller that was also in my stash.

The quilting was done by Darby Myers, and it's just perfect. I love that she chose pale pink thread for everything by the white border. It's so subtle and pretty.

The backing was another found in my stash--such fun Christmas trees. (Sorry, I can't even find any scraps to tell you what it is.)

There is a cute snowman block pieced into the back as well. Then it was bound in the swirly red fabric, the same as the thin inner border.

Now it's all finished and ready for that snuggling.

Quilt statistics:
Pattern by: Lori Holt of Bee in my Bonnet
Size: 50" x 62"
Machine pieced by: Me
Quilted by: Darby Myers

I'm linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts, TGIFF, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, and Fort Worth Fabric Studio Studio

Friday Finish: Christmas in the City

Around this time last year, I started working on Tula Pink's City Sampler, which has 100 blocks.

My idea was to start in the upper left corner with very low volume blocks with just a touch of red.

Gradually add more red to the blocks.

Then red and white blocks with a touch of green.

Decrease the amount of white and have mostly red and some green. (Oops, where did that thread come from?)

And then work in the opposite way to the lower right hand corner. Mostly green with some red.

Gradually add some white, while working mostly with green.

Eliminate the red.

And end up with very low volume white and green blocks.

You know how you have a vision but you are never quite sure if the reality will match it your expectations? In this case, I'm thrilled with the results.

Even the back--I used up some of my favorite Christmas prints.

And added a peppermint stripe binding.

You may be familiar with the fact that I photograph nearly all of my quilts in front of our little shed in the backyard. But Mark and I took this quilt out for a fun photo op. Hope you enjoy it.

Details:

Pattern: City Sampler by Tula Pink

Size: 60" x 60"

Blocks: 100 scrappy 6" blocks

Pieced by: Me.

Machine quilted by: Darby Myers

I'm linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts, TGIFF, Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Ft. Worth Fabric Studio. Have a great weekend.

Friday Finish: Cherry Baby

I can't even remember when I started making this quilt. It was at our yearly quilt retreat in the mountains at the end of February, but I can't remember the year--probably at least five years ago.

This is what I do remember. The pattern is by Carrie Nelson of Miss Rosie's Quilt Company, and the fabric is by Holly Holderman of Lakehouse Dry Goods.

It is a perfect combination. Most of the fabric has very subtle metallic accents that are just beautiful, but don't photograph well.The blocks are large enough to really show off the fabric.

I wanted to use the pink check fabric on the bias for the binding but didn't have enough. I did have a coordinating alphabet panel that I couldn't figure out what to do with, so I ended up cutting it into strips for the binding. That gave me a mostly white binding with little pops of color every so often. You can also see the pretty fabric used for the backing--blue with little cherries all over.

The size is 64" x 64" and was beautifully quilted by Darby. It will go up for charity auction next April.

I can't resist sharing a couple more pictures.

I'm linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts, TGIFF, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, and Ft. Worth Fabric Company. Have a lovely weekend.

Friday Finish: Pop Beads

I started this quilt a long time ago. According to some photos I uploaded to Flickr, it was in February 2011. It is made entirely of my precious collection of original Flea Market Fancy fabric and Kona snow for the background.

It was based on a quilt by Mary Hickey called Mama's Pop Beads, which she made based on a vintage quilt. Mary's quilt was very scrappy and had a "piano keys" border. So I figured out a way to simplify the block and make it out of a single fabric plus the background.

I had originally planned on posting a free tutorial on how to make the quilt block, after receiving several requests for the information. Then after the whole top was sewn together, I happened to notice a magazine in my local quilt shop with a very similar quilt on the cover. It turned out to be "Chain of Fools" by Jen Kingwell. At that point I was not familiar with Jen (which shows you just how long ago that was!), but still, even though quilt was totally based on Mary Hickey's quilt, it felt awkward to post the tutorial. So the quilt top languished in a pile for the next several years.

In spring I decided that it needed to be completed. My block construction is different from either Mary's or Jen's, so if there is any interest, I will post the tutorial.

I love this quilt so very much.

Darby quilted it with one of my favorite designs.

And of course, since it is made entirely of original FMF, it felt like the obvious choice to use more Denyse Schmidt fabric on the back.

And the binding too.

Linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts, TGIFF, Fort Worth Fabric Studio, and Confessions of a Fabric Addict. Happy weekend, everyone.

Friday Finish: Texas A&M

I started this quilt three years ago for my brother's daughter, Liz, who was a student at Texas A&M. I had planned it for her graduation. She graduated over two years ago. Hmmm. How I wish procrastination wasn't such an issue with me.

The Aggies fabric came from the Fat Quarter Shop and the rest came from my stash.

Oh, except the backing fabric, which is a favorite. The colors are just perfect to coordinate with the sports fabric on the front but adds a nice girly touch.

Isn't it awesome?

 Darby surprised me by quilting the logo several times--she is the best!

It's on its way to Dallas. I really hope Liz likes it. (We don't see her nearly often enough so I hope she doesn't mind that I grabbed this picture off her Instagram feed--isn't she beautiful?)

I'm linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts, TGIFF and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.