Ho-Ho Holiday Swap Fabric

I joined the Ho-Ho Holiday Swap a little while ago and received two of three fat quarters from the gals in my group. (The third one should be coming soon.) We were put in groups of four and were instructed to mail three red, green, or white fat quarters to each member of our group. We were then paired up with a partner out of that group and are supposed to make an ornament using at least one of the fat quarters we received. Here's what I've been sent so far.

Don't you just love how it's folded? I haven't wanted to unfold it since it's so cute.

The fabrics don't go well together AT ALL, so I hope the third fat quarter I get blends well with one or the other. Otherwise, I'll grab something from my stash. You may not be able to tell from the picture, but the reds are totally different.

I've been trying to come up with a small project idea for my brother-in-law because he loves coke. Maybe I can make him a warm drink cosy or something.


For kicks, I looked through this book my mom has had since the 70s for ornament inspiration. I didn't find much, but it was fun to look through.

Some cute appliqué. Love that train at the top.


The paper mobile on the left reminded me of this from Erin at Two More Seconds.


Although the photo picture quality is pretty terrible, I love the lime green and red combo in these decorations.


I decided on the ornament design for my partner, but I want to keep it a secret until I send it to her. It's not a traditional Christmas design, but I think I can make it work. I'm excited.

Have you participated in any swaps that you've totally loved? I want to get involved in more, so I'd love to hear about any you've participated in.

On an unrelated note, I may be MIA until after the weekend. The women in my church group are getting together for a craft day on Saturday (Super Saturday) and I was silly enough to put myself in charge of four of the six projects we're doing. The mister (bless his soul) has to make 175 cuts of wood for me tomorrow. If I survive the weekend, I'll show you the Christmas sewing I've been doing.

Blogger's Quilt Festival

I was looking back over the quilts I've made this year and realized that there's only one that I really really love, but I entered it in the quilt festival last time. So, inside of looking for a quilt I really loved, I instead tried to find a quilt I was proud of having made, and it's this charity quilt.


My brother-in-law asked me a few months ago if I'd be willing to make and donate a quilt for a silent auction his neighborhood was putting together to raise money for a boy with cerebral palsy. Since I only started quilting in January, I haven't had many opportunities for charity projects and thought this would be a great way to give back. After all, my family has been the recipient of some wonderfully charitable people over the years.

I set out to find a design that would work well with the jellyroll I planned to use. I ended up finding three designs that I liked and worked to fuse them together.


I wanted the back to be pieced so there would be more versatility to the quilt, thinking maybe someone would want to bid on it more if they could almost get two quilts out of one. So I sketched out the back...


and was able to break out of my "single fabric collection shell" a little bit by adding some fabrics from my stash that coordinated nicely - a good exercise for me.


I liked how some of the cuts came together to make a design I hadn't anticipated.


And I worked hard to improve my skills, carefully quilting and binding the quilt, forcing myself to take more care since I wanted it to be of good enough quality that someone would want to bid on it.

All in all, I'm really proud of this quilt. Not because I love the design, but mostly because I tried harder to do a better job to make a product that someone would want to own.

The Practical Guide to Patchwork

I was so excited to hear the UPS guy pull up to my house yesterday afternoon. My copy of Elizabeth Hartman's (the mastermind behind the Oh, Fransson! blog) book, The Practical Guide to Patchwork, had arrived!


We went on a tour of my father-in-law's work last night and I was able to read through a good chunk of it on the 45-minute drive down. And can I just say that it is excellent?! Elizabeth gives some really great advice for beginners (and those of us who need refreshers). Her projects are fantastic. I'm especially excited to try her Kitchen Windows quilt. I'm making a couple quilts for two of my sisters for Christmas and I'm really tempted to use the Kitchen Windows design for one of them.

If you haven't gotten your hands on a copy of this book yet, I highly recommend it. You can follow the blog tour and try to win a copy, or if you're like me and totally impatient, you can get one at Amazon (with free shipping with Amazon Prime).

Sewing Summit - October 2011

Have you heard about the Sewing Summit yet?! I am so stinking excited about this, I can't even tell you.

Erin from Quilting Bee Blocks and Amy from Amy's Creative Side have announced today their plans to host a Sewing Summit in Salt Lake City, Utah in October 2011 (my home state - yay!). You can check out the details here (more still to finalize), but I can tell you already that I'm going to start saving my money and blocking out my calendar so I can attend this event. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to wrangle Erin into letting me volunteer at it too.

There will be lots of classes on a variety of topics, awesome lectures from some amazing sewists, and so much fun to be had that you'll want to join us all there. Since they're still making plans, fill out their survey and add your two cents on what you'd like to see at the summit. Afterall, this is a conference for us!

Cathedrals

Remember this stack of fabric from the other day?


Well, it turned into this:


I used Heather's tutorial (part 1 and part 2) from {House} of A La Mode. I love, love, love how it turned out.


It took me about 3 and a half hours (cut, fold, press, and sew) to make this square, which measures about 13 inches. I used 10 and a half inch squares of fabric to start with and a 9 inch template. I thought I would get closer to 15 inches finished, so I'm not sure if my math was off or what.


This will become a pillow cover. The pillow form I'm using is 20 inches so I'm going to add some ivory, grass green, and navy colored borders to frame the design.


I'm not sure what the back of the pillow cover will look like, but I don't want it plain blue. I'd like to use some of the green and ivory to echo the front at least in color.


But isn't the back pretty on its own? It makes me think of this.


I may be crazy, but I'm somewhat tempted to make an entire quilt out of this and just put batting into each individual window. I think it would be amazing to have something like this to pass on to my kids (and hopefully, grandkids). Hmmm...perhaps 2011 will be the year of the Cathedral Quilt?


I found Heather's tutorial really easy and straight-forward. The Sometimes Crafter also has a tutorial as well as links to several more.

I'm linking up to: