Catching Up

Today I'm going to show you the other things that I worked on while I was "on vacation" from blogland.

 HOLIDAY THINGS
One of the things I made was a cute little potholder for a hostess gift for a friend. We celebrated Thanksgiving with them and I wanted to take something as a thank you. I had been wanting to make a pot holder and then I saw this cute little turkey on Jennifer Jangles blog (http://www.jenniferjangles.blogspot.com/). I decided that would be my gift. 

Another thing that I made, was also made for a gift (or gifts). These cute little ornaments are made with an ornament pack from Hummingbird Highway.

I stopped at her booth when I was a Quilt Festival to see all the neat stuff that she had and found this pack that had a printed piece of fusible interfacing and 9 pieces of fusible foam- it was called Taste of Nectar Ornament Pattern. The pieces in the center were cut at 1 inch, all nine were fused onto the interfacing, and then sewn on the lines both directions. After cutting them apart, they were given borders, layered with the foam and the backing, pressed, and quilted. The biggest challenge was making the HST that finished at 1 inch. Because I wanted 10 ornaments to give to the group that I play hand bells, I made one by piecing it and using some fleece. I was pleased with the way they turned out and they were all made from scraps from a table runner I made at Quilt Festival.

Have you ever made a bargello quilt? I had seen them and thought they look really neat but the idea of of making a  quilt was a little daunting. There was a bargello table runner class at my LQS and I decided that was a good place to start with bargello - I could give bargello a try without the commitment of a full quilt. When I went to pick fabric, I found this really pretty piece of fabric.

I knew I couldn't use it for the front so I chose fabrics to go with it and used it for the back. My fabrics are shown here; the top fabric is for the binding.

After cutting strips and sewing them together, I cut  varying widths from the unit.  

It's a very interesting process to build a bargello: sew the strips together, make a tube, cut widths across the tube, and then unsew the tube at different spots. I quilted the runner with a metallic thread - the first time I've ever used one. After some thread breakage, I changed to a needle meant for metallic thread and had success with my quilting. Here's the finished product. It looks very fall and was a great addition to my table in Oct and Nov.

Close up of quilting - can you see the metallic thread?

 It looks like I will need one more post to finish up with all that I have worked on the last half of 2014. I can't believe that I still have a few things to show you!

I'll be back in a few days to finish up and then again on January 25 to show my Block of the Month from last year. 

See you soon.
Dee