A Retro Christmas Quilt

While strolling the aisles of Joann Fabric recently, I saw this, the Alexander Henry Retro Christmas Fabric. And I had to have it.

I bought it and actually built the quilt around it. I made it for my mom, who loves Christmas more than most things. My one challenge to making it was that I wanted the back to be really Christmas-y, but the front to be something she could keep out year round. So I settled with 8 different shades of green, 4 whites, and 4 yellows. That’s what was going on in this formula writing back a few weeks ago.

And here’s the front:

With a pieced backing of some pieces from the front:

And with some festive lime green binding:

And last but not least, some Charlotte action…. her admiring the final product, after sitting all over it while I sewed on the binding. She certainly makes it more difficult to work….. but she’s just too cute.

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Quilted Table Runner

I can finally reveal what was going on when I wrote this entry.

I was making a quilted table runner for  a dear friend for Christmas. I sent it to her back in November as a Secret Santa gift exchange. I wanted to make sure she had it in time to decorate. In effort to make it even more useful, I made one side Christmas and one side that will work all year round.

The Christmas side

With a close up

The year round side

With a closeup

I used orange thread to quilt the year round side, and green to quilt the Christmas side. I absolutely love the way it turned out- it’s so handy! It was also really easy and fun to make- you may recognize a lot of the fabric on the orange/yellow/blue side from Claire’s quilt– I had a lot of leftover scraps. Really the only thing I had to buy was the Christmas side. I chose the grey to tie into both sides and use for a binding as something neutral.

And to wrap this up- Char wearing it like a saddle!

They’re in the mail!

I finished my oh-so-cute baby quilts this morning, and it was off to the post office to send them to Andy. The babies were born last week, and I’ve seen pictures- they’re seriously cute. And pretty sizable for twins!

Not one to send ugly mail, I made sure to wrap them nicely before sending them off:

Again, I’m going to sing the praises of charm packs. They make quilting really easy- cute combination of colors and fabrics, and no cutting.

The final quilts:

 

 

 

The backs of both of them together:

And both fronts (with my favorite quilting assistant)

Signed, with love, from Tia Andy. The proud dad is from Chile, and Andy wanted to incorporate the Chilean flag into the label.

 

Andy, I hope everyone loves them!

Making good progress!

I’m coming along nicely on the new baby twins quilts…. made from Tweet Tweet and It’s a Hoot charm packs.

The top of “It’s a Hoot” (with Charlotte, of course)

And just off the sewing machine, the “Tweet Tweet” top

This is the binding that’s going to go on both of them:

And lastly, the backing. Being a twin myself, I know it’s important to not have everything be identical, which is why we chose the different fronts for the quilts. I did think it would be fun to have similar backing, so I chose this.

I’m going to back one quilt in 1/3 of the right fabric, 2/3 of the left, then the reverse for the other. The two fabrics will be split by a plain brown strip, with possibly some of the front fabric incorporated into it, and the girls names embroidered on them. I’m totally in love with all the fabric!