Christmas Quilts

Most of our Christmas decorations have been packed away for another year, but a few things will stay out for a little longer.  Back in July of 2010 I was working on a sampler quilt along and won a jellyroll in one of the drawings.

Mary Englebreit - The Caroler Jelly Roll

For those of you who are not quilters, a jellyroll is a set of fabric cut in 2 1/2 inch strips.  The jellyroll I won was a Mary Englebreit Caroler jellyroll.  It is an interesting group of fabric that you wouldn’t think of as Christmas themed at first glance.  I looked around for a pattern to use that was designed for jellyrolls and decided to use the Gift Boxes pattern from Cozy Quilts.  I added a couple of additional fabrics so I would have more white fabric in the quilt and I also added some red for the border.  It is quilted with a green variegated thread in a meandering holly and berries pattern.

Christmas Gifts Quilt

I finished this quilt in May of 2011 and showed it in the Genesee Valley Quilt Club (GVQC) show in June.  There were a few bits left over so I made a set of pillow covers for our sectional.  I always make my pillow covers with zippers in the back so I can change them depending on the season.  Since this fabric doesn’t scream Christmas we plan on keeping them out at least until spring.  I use the quilt to keep warm while watching television.  Here is a picture of the pillows and quilt and also the other quilt I want to tell you about.

Christmas Quilts and Pillows

The wall hanging above the sectional is also a new quilt.  I finished around Thanksgiving so we could put it up for this season.  I plan on swapping it with the Autumn Leaves quilt I made that is now hanging in our hallway up stairs.

Christmas Tree Quilt

This quilt is the first original design I have created.  It was inspired by the fabric which is from the Laurel Burch Holiday Celebrations line.  Charlie and I saw it at Patricia’s Fabric House during their August quilt show (when they also have a great sale) and he kept saying, ” I love that fabric…you should make something with that.” I hung around to view the show for a while and he went home.  Before I left I picked up about a yard of each of the fabrics and some additional of the black.  I based the design on 4″ squares (finished) and planned it out on graph paper first.  Then I started fussy cutting and pinning things to my design wall until I had the look I wanted.

The pattern for snowflakes is from the book Paper Piece the Quick-Strip Way by Peggy Martin.  She was one of the speakers and taught a workshop I attended for the GVQC this fall.  I had to scale them down a bit to fit within my 4″ x 4″ scheme.  With fill pieces to make them square they measured 8″ x 8″ when finished.  I had to draw out another map to figure out how to piece this all together.  Mainly I pieced together rectangle sections and then pieced those together to make a strip that went from top to bottom.  I quilted the tree with a matching green embroidery thread on the front and back and used a gold embroidery thread on the black background.  If you click on the image you might be able to see the quilt motifs I used.  I did a stitch in the ditch on all the seams on the snowflakes, a meandering snowflake like motif in the black background and over the tree it is like small connecting arcs.  Kind of hard to describe, but maybe you can see in the bigger version.

Since this quilt also doesn’t scream Christmas, but to me rather just winter I plan on keeping it up until March or whenever our snow stops falling.

 

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Jelly Roll Quilt Along Progress and Redux

I have now completed 9 of the 12 jelly roll blocks and am up to date with the quilt along so I thought I would catch up on showing them to the blog world (all two of you who are reading this 🙂 ).

Jelly Roll Block 7

Block seven is my favorite so far. I love the batik that I used for the majority of it and overall I really like the pattern of the block.

Jelly Roll Block 8

Block 8 required some intricate work to piece the small blocks together and at first I had some difficulty sewing the strips on in the “around the world” style. For this block you had to do it twice. Once for the solid strips that surround the center 9 block and then for the rows of blocks that surround the block. The second time around I finally understood the technique and it was much easier to do.

Jelly Roll Block 9

For block 9 I tried to use some of the fabrics that I haven’t used much of so far. This was at the request of my Chief Creative Consultant (CCC – husband Charlie). He had a couple of favorite fabrics in the stash that he wanted me to use more of so I obliged him. At first blush the pattern would appear overly simple, but I love the way this one turned out and I like the larger strips of fabric used so it shows off the fabric a bit more.

Jelly Roll Block 6 - Redux

With all the blocks pinned up on my design board, it was obvious that the original block 6 I had created just didn’t fit with the others (see the original here by scrolling down the page a bit). I was aware of the incongruity that this block created, but didn’t feel like attempting a new one at this time. My CCC emphasized to me just how disturbed he was with the mismatch that this block created among the set so after careful consultation I decided to keep parts of it and remake the block with some additional new fabric. After a complete rip out I am very pleased (as is the CCC) with the final product and it works very well with the set.

Jelly Roll Blocks 1 - 9

These are the first 9 blocks created for the jelly roll quilt along. They are in order left to right and top to bottom as they were created and not necessarily in the order they will be layed out in the finished quilt. I am loving the way it is coming together.

The next pattern comes out on July 5th and the CCC has already given me a set of fabrics to use for this block. I do love that he has taken an active interest in helping me create the best quilt I can.

Each time a new pattern comes out and the block is finished the participants upload a picture of their finished block to a flickr group for all to see. This also enters you in a drawing for a variety of prizes. Well, at the last drawing I WON A JELLY ROLL!!!!!

Mary Englebreit - The Caroler Jelly Roll

I don’t mean to shout really, but I almost jumped out of my skin when I was looking at the announcement post and saw MY BLOCK as one of the winners (just scroll down a bit on the announcement page to see it – my username is harrispen).

Mary Englebreit - The Caroler Jelly Roll

Thanks so much to Konda at Moose on the Porch Quilts for hosting this fun quilt along and for the great Mary Engelbreit jelly roll in the Caroler pattern she sent me as my prize. My CCC and I are already contemplating how best to utilize this cute set of fabrics for a holiday themed quilt.

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Jellyroll Quilt Along – Catching Up

My previous post says it all. I have lost my freedom due to having to work for a living (boo hoo for me). I have been quilting since I started working, just not as much as I did while on hiatus. The one thing I haven’t made time for is to post anything about it. The Jellyroll Quilt Along is one of those quilting things that I have kept up with in the sewing department, but I didn’t even have the time to upload the pictures for the last four of them to flickr to be considered for the giveaway drawings until a couple of days ago.

The challenge of the Jellyroll Quilt Along is choosing the fabrics to use for each square. Some of the squares have been simpler than others. The third square is a fairly simple design, but I like the way mine turned out.

Jelly Roll Quilt Along Square 3

With the fourth square I wanted to make sure that it was more random looking and not too uniform. Again, I am pleased with the finished square.

Jelly Roll Quilt Along Square 4

The fifth square is one of my favorite ones so far. It is called “chain link” by its creator and looks stunning when done in mass with all the same squares and corresponding sashing and borders in a full quilt. You can check out a sample at the designer,Emily Herrick’s blog, Crazy Old Ladies Quilts (just scroll down the page a bit).

Jelly Roll Quilt Along Square 5

The most recent square includes a fussy cut from fabric I hadn’t originally included in my stash for this project. The pink background matched the pink in one of the fabrics so I thought it would be a nice accent for this square. I already used some fussy cut squares in a previous square and didn’t want to use the same fabric for the focal point of this one too. I love the way the butterfly just pops out at you.

Jelly Roll Quilt Along Square 6

Some of the fun of doing all of this is to imagine what it will look like with sashing and borders as a whole quilt. Each time I pick out fabric for the current square I like to lay out all of the squares I have already done to use as a reference for picking out fabric for the current square. I want to make sure they don’t all look the same and that I am using a wide variety of the fabrics I have chosen for this quilt.

Monday the 24th is the next time a pattern will be revealed. I am looking forward to then for square 7!

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Jelly Roll Sampler Quilt Along Square 2!

Jelly Roll Sampler Quilt Along Square 2

It’s time for the second installment of the Jelly Roll Sampler Quilt Along presented by Moose on the Porch Quilts. For those of you that are non-quilters you can find an explanation of what a jelly roll is on my first post about this fun quilting challenge.

I love the way this block turned out! Since I’m not using a jelly roll, and instead am using fabric from my stash, I couldn’t put this together exactly as the instructions indicated (sewing two strips together and then cutting them into 12 pairs). Instead the lighter purple squares are fussy cut from the fabric so I made sure that each one was exactly centered over one of each of the four different colored “stars” in the fabric and then each of the 12 pairs were sewn together. It took me a while to arrange the squares to make a uniform pattern with those different colors, but it finally fell into place.

All the participants are uploading pictures of the squares they make to a Flickr group. Take a look at all the squares created so far and stay tuned for the next square coming up after April 1st. I am so happy with my first two squares that I can’t wait for the next pattern!

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Jelly Roll Sampler Quilt Along Square 1!

Jelly Roll Sampler Quilt Along Square 1

I decided to challenge myself by joining the Jelly Roll Sampler Quilt Along presented by Moose on the Porch Quilts. For those of you that are non-quilters, a jelly roll is usually a set of about 20 different fabrics that are cut into strips of 2 1/2 inches for the width of the fabric (usually 44 inches). There are typically 2 of each of the different fabrics so you have about 40 strips of fabric to work with.

I didn’t have a jelly roll, but have plenty of fabric so I decided to just use what I already have on hand. I selected a group of about 20 fabrics that I will use for this challenge. I have chosen a group of mostly purple and turquoise for this sampler and can’t wait for the next pattern to be presented in about 10 days.

Jelly Roll Sampler Quilt Along Fabric

All the participants are uploading pictures of the squares they make to a Flickr group.  Take a look at all the squares created so far and stay tuned for the next square coming up after March 15th.

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