This Christmas tree skirt came from a pattern published by Susan
Rand
and Paula Kemperman and measures approximately 45". I machine pieced
and
hand quilted this one in 1989 or thereabouts -- I can't remember! ;)
I made this wallhanging in 1999, since we thought at the time that
we
wouldn't be spending Christmas at home. Huh? Let me explain. Since we
weren't
going to be home, I didn't want to put up my tree. However, I wanted something
to look like a tree in order to get into a holiday mood. Hence, the
idea
of making this quilt was born! As it turned out, we did stay home,
after
all, so I ended up with this and the regular tree!
The quilt, machine pieced and machine quilted, is approximately 36"
by 44" and comes from a pattern by Gail Abeloe (Back Porch Press). It
fits
pretty nearly perfectly into a little niche in one of the inside walls
of my house.
This quilt started life as a Benartex panel depicting the 12 Days of Christmas; I bought it at the end of 1998, but I didn't get around to doing anything with it until the summer of 2001. The pattern was designed by Jackie Robinson, putting the individual pieces of the panel into a log cabin setting with dimensional stars in the sashing and border. I modified the pattern just a bit in size, so it ended up measuring roughly 43" x 65". It was machine pieced and machine quilted. I didn't think that it needed lots of fancy quilting, since the fabrics are so busy, so I just stitched in the ditch along some of the "logs" and then used gold metallic thread to free-motion outline the motifs in each block center. This is a photo of the quilt:
And here is a detail of one of the blocks:
I made these two stockings in September, 2001, for two of my grandsons. Both use machine appliqué and machine quilting. The appliqué motifs were fused onto the fabric and then blanket stitched in place. Each stocking measures approximately 16 1/2" tall and 11" wide from heel to toe. The first one is for Benjamin.
And this one is for his younger brother, Dominic.
I saw the pattern for this block online (click here for pattern) and decided to make it into a table runner, which I finished in November, 2001. I didn't have enough of any red or green Christmas fabrics to do all of the stripes the same, so I decided to use two reds and two greens in each block. It worked fine. :) Then I added sashing, borders and triangular end pieces to the blocks. The finished table runner measures approximately 68" x 16.5". This is a photo of the runner on my table:
And here is a detail where you can see part of the machine quilting. I used gold metallic thread on this, since most of the fabrics had a touch of gold in them, too. The quilting motif in each block is a snowflake, though it's difficult to see here.
The only piecing necessary for this was to stitch the pockets onto the panel. Then I machine quilted the whole thing. The panel already had black outlining the various parts of the picture, so I free-motion quilted in black over much of that. Parts of it, however, I did with silver metallic thread in hopes of giving the outdoor parts a sort of icy effect. That doesn't show in the photo, though. Oh well. This is the first quilted piece I've made without a binding for the outer edges. Instead, I turned the edges in and topstitched them. The finished piece measures 30 1/2" x 27" and was completed at the end of September, 2002.
