Christmas in January

By on 1-28-2010 in Original Quilts

Balsa Wood Ornaments above, Embroidered and Beaded Ornaments below

The first Christmas vintage pattern. I hope to bring one new pattern each month….that will be a total of 12 new patterns in the year, free to download with suggestions and/or photos of how I have used them through the years.

The original patterns were used to cut and paint balsa wood ornaments. I immediately fell in love with these Mexican themed ornaments. They were included in the McCall’s Christmas Make-it Ideas magazine, Volume X, 1967.

I chose to embroider and bead them on muslin, back them with a piece of bright red felt then fringe the edges beyond the seam. When I embroider on muslin I back the pieces with flannelette which gives them dimension when finished as well as hiding any back stitching. I then do not have to use a hoop, but can embroider them simply by holding them.

Hand work is my favourite technique, giving me the chance to unwind and design as I go. Usually I’m not sure what I will do with a piece until I’ve actually started it.

Balsa Wood ornament

You can find all the patterns in this 590kb pdf document:McCall’s Christmas Balsa Wood Ornaments

Lighthouse, Prince Edward Island, Canada

By on 1-28-2010 in Original Quilts

Prince Edward Lighthouse

The lighthouse quilt was made for a black and white with one colour pop challange with the Valerie Hearder Landscape yahoo group. I could not find printed fabrics that I liked for this little quilt so I bought solid black and white and used my machine’s fancy stitches to pattern them. A tear away backing kept the stitches raised and then was removed for easy quilting. The gulls in the clouds were done with a scallop stitch. The whole quilt was machine quilted. This 17″ by 17″ quilt is the first black and white quilt I have made. I usually use a lot of colour as you can see in the Sunrise, Sunset quilt.

I designed this quilt from a photo of the Prince Edward Island lighthouse with a free piece of software called “Quilt Assistant”. Here is where you can find it:

http://www.cosman.nl/software_en.html

It is an awesome program and I plan to use it more often.