Christmas Quilt

Here is the Christmas quilt I made for this year.  It has the same red and blue fabrics as the one last year but they look very different.

Each block is made of 16 HSTs - 480 of them!  I made them with my Wonder Cut Ruler and didn't have any problems.  I spent several nights ironing and clipping corners.  There were so many pieces.

I didn't have to trim the HSTs, but I did trim the set of 4's and the blocks as I went to make sure everything would line up just so.

I quilted it with loops and snowflakes.  It was quick and easy and it goes with the snowflakes on the red fabric.  Backed with red minky, it's a big quilt 60 by 72 inches.  Perfect for snuggling with this cutie!

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Scrappy Trip Around the World and a Note About Value

Well here she is, my scrappy trip around the world.  I know you guys already made them way back at the beginning of the year.  Yep, I'm that slow getting to projects I want to make!  But this one is different - really.

I started out making it just like the pattern says, but when I got my strips sewn and cut I got a crazy idea.  Why not make it really scrappy and spread out those strips of 5 so it would be even more scrappy?  Great idea if I had remembered what I learned this year about value.

What is value you might ask?  Value refers to how light or dark a color is in relation to surrounding colors. Value helps us decide how to layout a quilt to make the fabric either blend or contrast. This quilt needed a dark value for contrast as the running diagonals.  I thought the turquoise fabric would be contrasting enough to stand out, but I was wrong.  I should have used a navy. 

Since it was too late to start over, I was hoping to bring out the diagonal with some quilting. The turquoise is quilted with a terry twist and the centers with the straight line diamonds. It doesn't help as much as I had hoped for, but it is better.

So let this be a lesson to me!  Always think about value when picking fabrics for a quilt.  Even when you are making a rainbow quilt from scraps.

Disappearing 4 Patch Complete!

My friend Norece made a disappearing 4 patch a while ago saying that she had a stack of 6.5 inch blocks.  That got me thinking that I might have one in the closet too!   I did and it was a black Hawaiian  print that I had bought from the estate sale.

Love the pattern.  I wanted to make it bigger, but I ran out of the light fabric and couldn't find anymore.  I used the rest of it on the back to make racing stripes.  

Quilted in swirls to soften all the straight lines on the front. 

 Sometimes it takes a friend to encourage you to make a new pattern.  Thanks Norece for all your good ideas!

Quilted Fleece Redo

Here is my original fleece blanket that I quilted a while back.  While I loved the quilting, I didn't love the fringe.  Bunk House Quilts made a stadium blanket last week and it had a different kind of edge - fleece binding!  She even linked to her tutorial on how to do it.  

So I cut off the fringe and added a fleece border that matched the back of the blanket.  It's a little small, but I intend to give it as a lap quilt.

Her directions are very clear, but I pinned the binding anyway.  There was enough overlap when I pinned it.  I trimmed it with my smaller sized super sharp scissors.

You round the corners with a plate, sew the binding (unfolded) to the front with a 1/2 seam allowance, then fold over and stitch in the ditch on the front.  Almost like for a regular quilt except there is no ironing!

This is a great type of blanket to practice quilting on.  My daughter is doing this with a printed fleece (same fabric on both sides)  The quilting doesn't stand out so much this way.  We'll be posting on that soon.  I accidentally gave the first one away without taking a picture!

My cute helpers!

My Two Favorite Quilting Tools

I was cutting my scraps the other day and got to thinking about how much I love this ruler.  So I thought I would share my 2 favorite tools with you today!

#1 Favorite Tool:  Shape Cut Pro

This ruler tool cuts 8 - 2.5 inch or 4 - 5 inch strips very quickly!  No moving your ruler, just lay the shape cut pro on top of your fabric, aline the top fold and cut, cut, cut!  This is great for cutting binding strips.  You can also use it for cutting squares but cutting your strips, rotating the ruler 90 degrees, then cut again.

 Here I am using it to cut my 2.5 inch strip pieces into squares.

Then I put all the pieces smaller than 2.5 in this bucket for Josie to play with.

 #2 Favorite Tool:  Simplicity Bias Tape Maker

You might guess that this tool irons 2.5 inch strips into binding for you!  How can you not love that?  Ironing is my least favorite part of quilting and this tool helps with that.  All you have to do is sew your binding strips together on an angle, load onto the roller and feed through the metal tip.  The 2.5 inch single fold tip is not included with the machine.

  Perfectly folded binding every time!  What are your favorite time saving quilting tools?