A Bit of Christmas

Sunny and cooler. My kind of weather. Even my plants are liking this weather. We didn't have an extremely hot summer this year. Then again, I spent most of my time in the house. Today my plans include making more Christmas pillows.

The Long Arm Project

I have a limited amount of Christmas fabric. I used to have a lot of it. Then, I made several gifts and projects and used most of it. After looking through my stash, I found just enough to make four pillows. Or maybe two small wall hangings and two pillows. I think there's a Christmas fabric shopping trip in my future.

The project is Christmas in July 2020. Well, I'm a couple months off from July, but hey, who knows what month it is anyway, right? While this is a small project, it is packed with many skills to practice. The following Skills are covered in the lesson:

  • Import Patterns
  • Importing Images
  • CS Project Setup
  • Draw Pattern
  • CS Hierarchy
  • Multiple Pattern Fill
  • Custom Fill
  • Double and Single Nodes
  • Resizing Patterns
  • Saving a Project

Christmas Star Pillow

The Patterns

The Tree pattern is a combination of half-square triangles and squares or rectangles to tier the tree. The star is a basic Star-in-Star block. The borders are 3" finished.

Quilting the Star

While the border looks simple on this quilt, I learned several things about placing borders. The top border was no issue, however the bottom border didn't line-up on the first attempt. At first, I wasn't sure what I did wrong. Then, I realized I didn't accurately measure the height of the border. My small mistake made quite a difference. I do double-check during the set-up. My initial error reminded me why I do the double-check.

The Border Corner

The Tree

The Tree uses some trim techniques and more practice with trim and alignment. There are many ways to accomplish the same thing using Creative Studio. I like that this project gave me the opportunity to try a few, side-by-side, on a similar project. It provides a chance to see how they work and why you might use one technique over another.

The Christmas Tree

I have two more of the blocks so I'll be practicing the techniques again. I may make the next to as small wall-hangings instead of pillows. In the meantime, maybe I'll get these pillows done before Christmas this year.

What are your plans for the week?

Until till next time,

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Pillow Practice

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A Hero's Quilt