Jolly Little Christmas Quilt along finished

In January of 2017, Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilts hosted the "Have a Jolly little Christmas" quilt along and I made lots of blocks and completed a lot of projects last Christmas as documented in this blog post.  My own lap quilt top was finished last Christmas, but I didn't get to quilting it.  I decided to send it out for quilting in November to my neighbour across the street, Chris Bogart.  Time to get it done.  She did a fabulous job on it with a snowflake pattern in a light green thread.  I got the binding done before December and enjoyed it on my couch during the Christmas season together with the matching pillows I made last year.  I will leave it on the couch til the end of January to enjoy it a little longer. (Click on the photos to enlarge for a better view.)

Finished quilt

Lorna provided a "Sinterklaas" option for those of us with Dutch heritage.

Chris Bogart quilted it for me on her longarm machine with a snowflake pattern.

Jolly Little Christmas

In January 2017, Lorna, of Sew Fresh quilts started up a sew along featuring Christmas blocks. Every two weeks a block was released. I have posted several times about my progress on sewing these blocks and I got a little carried away :-).  In early December, I got caught up on the blocks and then put some up on the design wall to make myself a lap quilt for Christmas.  I ended up sewing a few more blocks to make the colours work.  The Sinterklaas I had made earlier, was too dark for these blocks and I also had to make another ornament block so I could put them all along the top.  It just didn't look right putting another block in the middle.  Here is a photo of the lap quilt.  It is not quilted yet, but I hope to pin baste it very soon and get it quilted so it's ready for next year's Christmas.

lap quilt for myself

I had lots of blocks left!  I had made two more Sinterklaas blocks but one was too busy.  So, with these two squares I made pillows for two of my kids that still do the Dutch tradition with their kids :-).  

Ben's Sinterklaas pillow

Amanda's Sinterklaas pillow

 I then laid out 16 more blocks on the wall and got another lap quilt out of it for my daughter in law, Becky:

I made two more blocks, Santa and Sinterklaas to reflect Eric's Dutch heritage and Becky's Canadian heritage :-).

Here are a few close ups of the quilt.  I quilted it with wavy lines as Lorna quilts the vast majority of her quilts...quick, effective and doesn't take away from the lovely blocks.

The back of Becky's quilt

I still had a lot of blocks left so I made some pillows.  The first two pillows were for Becky and Eric:

I used two stocking blocks and added a couple of white strips around to make them large enough to fit the 16" x 26" pillow forms from IKEA.

Mittens

I finally found a great use for the Charlie Brown Christmas fabric I bought a few years ago. It was perfect for the back of Becky and Eric's pillows :-)

I then made two pillows for myself to change around the fall covers for my livingroom pillows.

my pillows

back of my pillows

I still have four poinsettia blocks left to make a table runner, but I ran out of time...they will be for next Christmas :-).  This was such an enjoyable quilt along. Thanks so much Lorna for a very fun year preparing for Christmas!

I'm going to attempt to link up at Sew Fresh Quilts'  Let's Be Social :-).  

Sinterklaas

Last week Saturday, the next pattern was up for the Jolly Little Christmas quilt a long hosted by Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts.  Santa Claus was the next block.  Santa Claus was not a thing in my household when I was growing up.  As I am of Dutch heritage, Saint Nicholas, or Sinterklaas, was an exciting event.  On December 5th, we would put out our shoes (we didn't have wooden shoes anymore :-) and we would put hay in and a carrot for Sinterklaas' white horse.  In the morning, we would find candies and a chocolate initial and a few little trinkets in our shoe (if we had been good lol).  That evening, many little packages and surprises would be opened complete with little poems which had something to do with the gift or recipient.  

When I saw the Santa Claus block before the quilt along was launched, I emailed Lorna with some links to the Sinterklaas tradition to see if she would be able to design a Dutch version.  Sure enough, when the pattern was posted, there at the bottom was a 'bonus' block which really made my Dutch heart go pitter patter.  Thanks so much Lorna for your generosity!  This just makes me happy! And, the pattern went together so nicely.

Here is the good old Saint himself...isn't he awesome!?  Complete with his trusty staff.

A Cardinal

Last week, Sew Fresh Quilts posted the next pattern for the Have a Jolly Little Christmas sew a long.  This was another one of those blocks that has lots of little pieces and angles and seams that need to be matched precisely.  So, I decided to only do 1 block!  Wow, can't believe the self discipline LOL.  Once it was done, I was already sorry I hadn't done a second one, but I can always do one more later, "when I have time", right?  Hmmm...I'll bet that'll never happen!  Here is the cardinal...it also had an eye that required cutting a 3/4" square.  Good practise for precision sewing for sure :-).

Love this cardinal.....the greens are off on the colours..they are much prettier in real life.

I find it a lot easier to lay out all the pieces on a small cutting board as I cut them.  I also press the squares in half and lay them out properly to get the right angles.  This helps a lot when sewing them together and you don't have to label all the pieces with the proper size.  I can then carry the board to my sewing machine and stitch it together.  Works for me :-).

Partridge in a Pear Tree

Saturday morning arrived with the uploading of the next block in the Jolly Little Christmas Quilt a long.  My husband was away for the day so I sent off an email to my friend Deb, who is also working on these blocks, and invited her over to sew a long :-).  We had a fun day together.  It took awhile to cut all the patches for these partridges.  There will definitely not be 8 of these blocks in my future anytime soon :-).  But, we valiantly cut out two blocks each. 

I finally got the blocks finished this afternoon after a lot of "reverse stitching" and careful pressing and pinning.  The eyeballs of the partridges (hard to see on the photos) are 1/4" finished!!  You can hardly hold these pieces to sew them together LOL. I made a mistake on my polka dotted pear and had already trimmed the triangles off when I realized there were only supposed to be two triangles, not four.  I didn't have enough fabric left to cut out another square, so I had to piece it....so there is a blemish on my poor pear.  As my husband said, "It's patchwork"!  I do love the way they turned out. (Click on the photos to enlarge.)

Deb's partridge pieces

My set up for sewing.  I've used this trusty Singer 15-88 treadle machine to piece all my blocks :-)

Deb getting ready to sew

my more modern partridge

the more traditional partridge

...with a few of the other blocks

....with a few of the modernish blocks

Candle mania!

We were away for the weekend so I could not work on the new Jolly Little Christmas sew along block.  But, Monday morning I got right at it and in between all kinds of other March break activities, I got them finished last night.  I could not resist making 8 of these as I had chosen colour combinations and couldn't decide which ones to leave out, so made them all :-).  I really love these candles...maybe my favourite block so far?  Here are the 8 blocks (four in a more tradition colourway and four in modernish fabrics).  (Click on the photo to enlarge them.)

All the blocks to date

Jolly Little Christmas sew-a-long Poinsetta

Last Saturday, another block came out for the Have a Jolly Little Christmas sew a long hosted by Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilts.  These blocks are just pure fun!  I made one block for the Christmas lap quilt that I hope to make when all the blocks are finished and also three more to make a table runner or maybe a pillow or two.  

The block on the right will go into the modern layout for a lap quilt and the other three are from the more traditional line of fabrics.

 

Sew Fresh Sew along and Canada 150 progress

On Saturday, I finished sewing the next three blocks in the Next step Design's Canada 150 quilt.  I'm happy that I am keeping up with the blocks each week.  And, a friend let me root around in her red scraps so I have some new variety :-).

Blocks 37 - 39

On Saturday the third block in the "Have a Jolly Little Christmas Quilt along" from Sew Fresh Quilts was published.  This one was a Christmas bow.  I made two bows, one for each colour way I'm using.  They turned out very nicely.  This is a really fun project!

I had to pay attention to keep all the letters going in the right direction for this one :-).

I was afraid the red dots would be too light, but I like the way it turned out

Quite a few of the blocks plus a variety of odds and ends on the design wall :-)

Mittens - second week of Sew Fresh sew a long

Today the pattern for the mittens block was uploaded on the Sew Fresh Quilts blog.  I am really enjoying this "Have a Jolly Little Christmas" quilt a long.  I made 8 blocks to go along with the 8 stockings that I made two weeks ago.

These are the mismatched mittens with a different colour in each pair matching the Ink & Arrow Christmas fabric I purchased last fall.  I went back to the shop and they had the fabrics in the clearance 40% off.  Bonus :-).

I did the more traditional ones matching the mittens in the block.  Love these too.

Here are all the blocks together on the design wall.  Pure fun!

Thanks so much Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilts for designing these fun blocks for us.  How many sleeps til the next block comes out? LOL

Stockings!

What a fun morning!  I woke up at 6:00 this morning with the feeling that something good was happening today!  Oh yes...the Have a Jolly Little Christmas Quilt a long from Sew Fresh Quilts was starting today! 

I was down at my computer at 6:45 and soon the blog post was up.  Stockings were up first!   What a fun block.  Of course I calculated wrong and ended up with 8 blocks when I thought I was going to have 4.   But, that's not a problem LOL.  I'm thinking of making some pillows out of some of the blocks and maybe a quilt top....we shall see.  

It was a lot of fun pulling fabrics from my Christmas stash.  I did some more traditional blocks using a fun Christmas print for inspiration and then found the lovely fabrics I bought last fall at Quilting by Design. They are by Ink and Arrow fabrics. I used the navy blue focus fabric for one of the stockings and found some tone on tone prints for the rest.  I used the other fabrics in the series that I purchased for the cuffs.  I may have to pick up a few more of the prints and some yardage to use in each of the blocks as we go through the sew a long :-).  And, we wonder why we don't use up our stashes eh? LOL  (Click on the photo to enlarge.)

Four blocks of the more traditional colours - the blue stocking is done with a Jason Yenter print from a few years ago.

This is the fun print I used to choose the colours for the above stockings

The Ink & Arrow fabrics with the addition of some polka dot tone on tones.

Here you can see all the blocks together - BUT - I spot an oops!!  I sewed the wrong cuff to the yellow stockings :-(

I decided to fix them right away and here are the finished blocks.

 Thanks you Lorna for the very fun morning!  Now back to my regular scheduled tasks...working on my mega UFO's LOL.  My husband rolled his eyes when he saw I was working on a new project and offered to put Christmas music on.