Handmade Holidays

Now that gifts have been opened, it's time for hand made reveals! 

Thanks to the magic of internet I got to watch my mom, brother and sister in law open their gifts!

This Rock Candy table topper is made out of the remnants of one of my very first quilts, a bargello.

 

I need to photograph that quilt. It was pre-blogging. The border fabric is all wine labels. I had just enough left to make this table topper, a table runner for Shawna (my sister in law), and the plus table runner below, which is going to our landlord.

The second plus table runner is made out of a French looking fabric called Savonnerie.

 Funny story - about 10 years I made my dad a quilt. I gave it to him on his first trip to Germany. On his first day in the country. After a very long flight. When he got home he didn't remember where the quilt came from! He told me "SOME artists SIGN their work." LOL. So ... LABELS! I bought some fabric with pre-printed labels, so you just have to write your name in.

 I made this cat apron for a friend who did NOT want his face on the internet.

 I made the kids fleece PJ pants. Haven had picked out the robot fabric a long time ago, but I never got them made. So I ended up getting her some cat fleece and using the robot fleece for Ethan. But I had guilt for giving him her robots.

 So I made her some shorts. This photo says it all!

You want me to MATCH my brother?!?!?

For Rob I made the Jedediah Pants from Thread Theory.

 This is a really nice pattern!! I didn't really finish the pants because I thought they would need fitting, but they actually fit perfectly! Just need to shorten the legs to the right length.

 

I made this tester pair out of lightweight denim, so the next pair will need to be twill or something. So that means Rob has to go fabric shopping!! Mwahahahaha!!!

I helped Petrina with the pattern for her Quilt of Valor that she gave to her husband today. The stars glow in the dark!!!

 Megan was in the Kaleidoscope quilt class I taught in October, and this is her finished quilt top. It's beautiful!

 I made a new School House Tunic out of my favorite fabric from the 25th and Pine line from Moda.

 Here's a closeup of the fabric. I love it!

 

These cookies were supposed to look like a poinsettia, but I had a really hard time make red frosting. So I give you day glow hot pink poinsettia cookies!

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! I hope to see all of your handmade gifts too!

Double Sided Quilt

A Kaleidoscope quilt had been on my Pinterest board for quite some time. In fact, I pinned two different versions without even realizing it! I made this quilt some time last year but never got it blogged. It hung in the craft store above the fabric line it's made from until a few weeks ago, and then I finally quilted it last week. 

I used fabric from the line Blythe from Robert Kaufman. I also made a shirt out of this fabric. 

I didn't paper piece this quilt. I didn't use a special ruler. I, like a psychopath, cut this quilt from a template and used 10" squares. And linen. I made a quilt with a gazillion points out of linen. It almost didn't work, but it was close enough that I was able to manage. If you want to make a Kaleidoscope quilt do yourself a favor and don't be like me! We will be stocking the Kaleido Ruler in the shop, so if you want to make one I would go with the ruler. 

For the backing I had some 6" hexagons cut out from the line so I decided to use them to piece the backing. There weren't enough for the whole quilt back, so I decided to "float" them in the gray fabric. I LOVE the back! I think I like it more than the front!

I used Moda's tutorial for sewing rows of hexagons together by machine. Gray hexagons and half hexagons filled in the holes to make it square, and then I added fabric around all four sides to make it big enough. 

I started quilting this quilt during a video interview with AFN at the shop. I loaded the quilt and did a little meandering to show them how the long-arm quilt machine works. Then I left it alone for a few days while we counted inventory. (Blech.) Then one morning I woke up and thought "BEES!" My quilt needs bees! People call the hexagons honeycombs because of looking like, duh, honeycomb. So between the flowers and the honeycomb, I really needed bees. So I picked out all the stitches I had done for AFN and started again with this pantograph from Digitech Designs.

So now I have a double sided quilt! And I love it!