Monday, December 8, 2014

Stockings

We finally have stockings for everyone in our family! And they are even hung! But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning. I really get into Christmas. Yes, I'm the crazy lady watching Christmas movies in October because I'm that excited. So about five years ago when my husband and I moved into our first house, I was determined to go all out with Christmas decorations, including making stockings for each of us. I found this really cool spiral stocking pattern in American Patchwork & Quilting, and started on my husband's. This pattern is paper pieced, and there are A LOT of pieces. And this was one of my first paper pieced projects. It turned out really neat in the end, but I won't lie, it was a lot of work. So of course my motivated stalled after finishing this one.


Because my husband is pretty non-traditional in his tastes, I chose non-traditional fabrics and colors. He liked it. Or so he says ;-). Fun fact, because there are so many tiny pieces and I wasn't confident in paper piecing, I left all the paper in the patchwork. The stocking has a bit of a crinkle to it, haha.

Fast forward to last winter. Having Lorelai renewed my motivation to make stockings for our family. I decided to move away from the spiral stocking and went with simple, sweet patchwork squares in colors and fabrics that made me think of Lorelai. Red, pink, aqua, a little grey/cream. And those little gnomes appear again!



Scrapping the same stocking pattern as before meant needed a new pattern. But I wanted the stockings to be the same size and shape. So thinking I'd be smart and avoid tracing the finished stocking for my husband, I used the individual paper pattern pieces from that project. Well, obviously something was lost in translation. Lorelai's stocking ended up much bigger! Oh well, more room for goodies I guess.

The process for this one was pretty simple. I basically made a piece of patchwork that would cover my stocking pattern/template, trimmed it to that shape, basted it to some batting and quilted it. I trimmed my batting down, and then I used this tutorial to add a lining and cuff. I had to figure out my cuff dimensions though, they were not the same.


I plowed ahead and completed my stocking in November. I wanted it to be similar to Lorelai's in that it would have some kind of pieced body with a solid cuff. I didn't care too much whether all my stockings match...I wanted them to reflect each family member. So for me, it had to be those polar bears. They come from Laurie Wisbrun's Brrr collection. This is an older collection, but I drooled over those polar bears in the red/turquoise colorway for months. When I finally purchased just two small cuts of fabric I hoarded it for many more months, waiting for just the right purpose. I'm so happy to have these pretty fabrics turned into something lovely in my living room!



So here they are, all finished and waiting to be stuffed with treats on Christmas Eve :-).


Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Progress


Back in October I started a sewing 'to do' list to be completed before Christmas. Ha. Some of that list was definitely wishful thinking on my part!!! But I can say that some of it has been checked off already. Let's review...

    -Plush baby block for Lorelai's birthday. I've made them for other baby friends so she needs one, right?

All done! The only fabric in my stash that really said 'Lorelai' to me was those little gnomes again. I'm a sucker for little bearded holiday characters I guess. You may remember them from the dress I made her last Christmas. The fabric is from the same Michael Miller collection.







    -Birthday bunting for Lorelai's party



I ended up making her birthday bunting out of scrapbook paper due to lack of time and unfortunately I didn't get any good pictures of it. Sorry!

    -Lorelai's Christmas stocking (already started!)
    -My Christmas stocking


Our stockings are done and hanging in our living room, but I will save those for another post ;-).

    -Friendship quilt (post on this one coming soon...)


This one is in progress. Slow progress. I keep getting distracted with other projects, imagine that! But here's a sneak peak. My best friend had the truly awesome idea to make quilts together that would commemorate our friendship and our addiction to Downton Abbey. We started watching the series together ages ago and are slowly working our way through it. Life and little babes are keeping the pace pretty slow. The idea was to try and use the Downton Abbey fabric in our quilts, but neither of us really liked those prints. It's strange because the clothes on the show are really beautiful but I didn't see that reflected in the fabrics. Anyway, we compromised with using a few of the more appealing prints and mixing them with a variety of other fabrics. Because the Downton Abbey collection seemed to be mostly dark jewel tones, that was the direction we went with but maybe more richer and more vibrant. Probably from my influence...I just NEED color in my life. Anyway, more on this quilt later.


    -Christmas gifts...need to decide the what and who...


OK, so I think I'm making pretty good progress here too but I can't share everything in this category for obvious reasons ;-). I can tell you that I decided to make Lorelai and one other special kiddo hooded towels for Christmas, and I have an enticing stack of towels waiting for me in the sewing room now.

 
    -Lorelai's Christmas dress


The pattern is purchased and downloaded. The fabric is on it's way. I just hope this one isn't too much for me, clothes are not my strong suit!

    -Baby quilt to donate

I just started this one yesterday. No matter what projects I have going, I always have the craving to piece. Some people like the quilting part of the process, some prefer to applique. I'm a piecer. 


I've had this charm pack called Sakura Park in my stash for awhile now, I won it from Amy at Diary of a Quilter during one of her giveaways. It has really pretty, delicate colors and designs which I thought would make for a nice baby girl quilt.


My design inspiration came from a magazine ad...maybe American Patchwork & Quilting? Anywho, I've wanted to try out the snowball block anyway so why not now? I'm going to add sashing and/or borders to make this quilt a little bigger but I think I'll be able to get away with only using this one charm pack and my Kona Snow background fabric.


Well I think I'm doing pretty well! I'm fully prepared to accept that I won't finish the friendship quilt before Christmas though. And that's OK, it's been a really fun project to work on with my best friend, so I kind of don't want to be done! How are your holiday preparations going?