Christmas Table Toppers and Runners

 

After sharing this picture with my sisters, one of them said how much she liked my table topper and jokingly suggested that my next project for them should be Christmas table toppers. Well, this particular sister, Nancy, never really asks for anything. She's sweet, loving and generous. So, since she was the one doing the asking, I decided to go ahead and do it. But one of the problems was getting hers to her. She lives in the USA, and US Customs now wants any duty paid prior to shipping. I had tried to ship a quilt to one of my ex-husband's nieces in the USA, as she's expecting a baby. But when I tried setting up an account to pay any duty, I couldn't get it to work with my Canada Post account. Even if I didn't have to pay any duty, I would still require this account to say so. The alternative was to download an app, and I really didn't want another app on my phone (it's already giving me grief because so much memory is taken up by apps that I don't need, but can't uninstall). So, it's become nearly impossible to mail anything to the States. But another sister, Cindy, would be visiting Nancy in March. So I had to finish the table toppers in time to ship Nancy's to Cindy so that Cindy could take it with her. And that is why I have been making Christmas table toppers in January.  
Initially, I thought of making them all identical or nearly identical, using the Triangle Frenzy pattern. But that would require me buying a few metres of fabric to make 4 runners. Then I rummaged in my Christmas fabric and my patterns, and figured I could probably come up with enough to make the table runners/toppers, making each one unique instead. 

First I found a wide striped fabric that I was able to use with the Triangle Frenzy pattern. I didn't want to call it Triangle Frenzy or Christmas Frenzy or even Christmas Triangles. Since it has boughs and holly, I decided to call it Deck the Halls. It finished at about 41½" x 18". 

I had admired the Christmas Star topper pattern in the same magazine in which I found the pattern for Democracy Defended. It can also be found as an individual pattern here. This finished about 29" square (supposed to be 30", but that's not how mine turned out). The parallelograms in the red fabric are made using the stitch and flip method. a method I prefer to avoid, as it wastes too much fabric. But I was in a hurry to get these done and didn't want to take the time to calculate the measurements I needed. So I ended up with 16 large triangle leftovers in each of the red and green fabrics. After I was finished all of the toppers/runners, I stitched the triangles together into a large (about 13" square) mat, quilted with a layer of Insul-Bright so that I can use it under hot dishes for Christmas dinner. 

Next, I made the Ribbon Wreath pattern found in this book from my quilt library. 

It's meant to be a wallhanging, but I figured it would work as a table topper as well. 

It works out to 25" square. 
Finally, I had the Christmas Bells table runner pattern (slightly modified pattern called Holiday Bells currently available). 

This is the largest of the 4, measuring 52½" x 19½". I had one gold fabric that I could have used for the applique blocks in my stash of 1-metre fabrics, but I felt it was too light and didn't contrast well enough with the solid cream fabric. So, I raided the fabric that I have in my Coronation UFO that I planned on making to commemorate the coronation of King Charles III. I felt that I could "steal" these 2 squares of gold fabric and still have sufficient to finish that quilt. At the rate I'm going, I might not finish until William's coronation, however. 

I had 4 individually cut metres of this large Christmas floral print that I stitched together and used for the backing, and stitched all 4, plus my table mat, on the same backing. I used the Christmas Holly pantograph and some Aurilux thread in a Christmas variegation (white, red and green). 
Meanwhile, I had also decided to include my sister-in-law in receiving a table runner/topper, and added Christmas Birds, which I completed last August, to the collection. 

Pinning it to the design wall with the rest, which had yet to be quilted and bound, I shared this photo with my sister, Nancy, and told her she got first choice since it was her idea. She chose the Christmas Bells runner. 
I would find it a tough choice as I think they are all very pretty. Hopefully, the remaining sisters will be able to come to an amicable agreement on who gets which one. 

Christmas Spice Blend Collection

 

One of our local fairs has a fairly large Christmas craft section in their bench show, and this past year, I determined to enter as many classes in this section as I could. 
I don't know why, when I was in a time crunch to get the projects completed for the fair, I would pick patterns like these. 

Definitely not in the quick and easy category! As it turned out, I didn't complete the placemats until just before Christmas. The tops were made before the fair, but I ran out of time to get them quilted and bound. 

Creating these placemats required 11 different fabrics. The table runner required only 8, but since I wanted them to coordinate, I used the same fabrics, just omitting 3 in the runner.

Finishing the edges on this odd shape would have presented a challenge, so the instructions said to stitch it together inside out, then turn it right side out and quilt it. But I wanted to quilt it on the longarm, which I did, using an old broadcloth fabric from my stash as a false backing. I then stitched it inside out with the actual backing fabric, turned it right side out and stitched the opening closed. Finished!

I used the Amber pantograph to quilt it as I felt the it echoed the curves of the table runner. 
When I purchased the fabric, I chose clearance fabric that my local quilt shop sells in pre-cut metres and half-metres. So, I started out with 11 metres of fabric (or maybe it was only 10½ because one of them might have been just a half metre), so plenty not only for these projects, but for others as well. 

This is the Spiced Tea Mat from 50 Country Quilting Projects. You may recall that I'm trying to gradually work my way through this book, completing every project. I think I've still got 40 projects to do after this one. The idea behind this one is that, instead of just a regular hot mat, you create it with a pocket on the back to insert a little packet of spices. The instructions said to make the little packet using fusible interfacing, which didn't seem like the best idea to me. Instead, I made it using muslin. And because it was a Christmas hot mat, I used a blend of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves and allspice. It smells wonderful. And that was the inspiration for calling this collection Christmas Spice Blend. Since I was using a collection of mostly unrelated fabrics, I needed a name to call the assortment of projects I was making from it. And since it's a "blend" of 11 different fabrics, I figured that name would work. 
I have set a goal of making a different wallhanging for the living room and table treatment for the dining room for each month of the year, so naturally I needed a Christmas wallhanging for December. 

I love the vintage look of this wallhanging. To me, the colours are so rich.
I quilted the placemats, together with the wallhanging using a pantograph called Cappuccino. It's an older pantograph from Golden Threads that I bought second hand. Because both of these projects have small pieces, I wanted a fairly dense pantograph and this one fit the bill. I don't know if it's still available or not. When I try to go to the Golden Threads website, I get a warning from my security software. And it's not the same as the Cappuccino pantograph from Urban Elementz. 
Next, I decided to make some pillows for the couch. 

I used a colouring sheet I printed off the internet as a pattern for the applique. I call it Christmas bells. 

It's funny how the circle looks distorted into a rounded square once I placed the pillow form inside. I didn't have any extra 12" pillow forms, and they're not readily available or cheap, so, since I have a big bag of stuffing, I made my own using muslin. 

This block is called Swamp Angel. I found it during a search on my BlockBase+ software and found the name so intriguing that I decided I needed to make it. 

I later googled to find out what a "Swamp Angel" actually was. Not exactly consistent with the message of Christmas. 😕 But it's still a great block and made an attractive pillow. 

Remember my Christmas Tree napkins I made for the previous Christmas? 

They just happen to be made from fabrics that I included in the Christmas Spice Blend, so they coordinate as well. 
I still have plenty of fabric left from this collection, so more projects may be forthcoming. But that's enough Christmas projects for now. 

Mistletoe and Lace

 

This afghan actually started out as a loom-knitted project after I purchased the afghan loom and wanted to try it out. I soon discovered, however, that not only can I knit faster with needles than I can on a loom, but the pegs were so closer together that wrapping the yarn around them was tedious and frustrating. So, it sat around for awhile until I finally decided to remove what little I had accomplished, unravel it, and start fresh with a different project. 
As you may be aware, my goal is to make at least one project from every craft book I own. If only I would quit buying more books at thrift stores, I might actually be able to accomplish this goal. Nevertheless, I selected from my library the Mary Maxim book Timeless Treasures, and chose a pattern that suited the amount of yarn I had on hand, Ribbons and Lace. Or so I thought. Apparently, I tend to crochet larger than guage (I never do a sample swatch to check my guage, especially not with afghans) and ended up having to buy extra yarn. Even though I didn't add the fringe included in the pattern. (I'm not a fan of fringe on afghans. What is it good for? Besides getting tangled up when you wash the afghan). So, what was supposed to be a 48" x 56" afghan ended up 58" x 67". I got to the point where I had only 3 rows left, and only had a short string of yarn remaining. So one more skein of yarn was purchased, and the afghan was finished today. 

I love variegated yarn, but find that it makes the actual pattern in the design indistinct. I found the same thing with the Lace Enchantment afghan. And this one actually called for a contrast yarn, which I think would have enhanced it, but I'm not redoing it now. The pattern also called for restarting each row at the same end and working into the back loop. I found that a ridiculous idea, especially restarting each row - imagine all of the ends to work in! Initially, I did start working in the back loop, and then into the front loop on the following row for the part of the pattern that called for that, but I didn't really feel it made that great a difference in the look of it, so just started crocheting normally for all rows. 

Another WIP finished, which is likely my final finish for 2020, unless I actually get some potholders made...

UFOs No More - 2 projects

I get bored easily. And maybe distracted by new projects too easily. So, I start new projects before the current one is finished - over and over again. I have more UFOs than I care to count. And some of them have disappeared in the mess that is my quilting/crafting studio (or somewhere else in the house). Daughter and grandson move in and out, renovations in the studio, and rooms have to be rearranged and projects disappear, only to reappear when I'm looking for a different one... But I'm trying to do better!

I don't remember how long ago my niece Tara asked me for a set of placemats. She loves Christmas, so I opted for Christmas ones, and decided to go one better and make a matching table runner. I picked up these patterns, probably at my local quilt shop. 

They're from Pieced Tree Patterns, and are quick and easy. That is, they are quick and easy if they're not interrupted by renovations and you then have to find the pieces and the patterns and the time...

Now, I'll digress slightly to explain why I decided to finally finish this set now. Some time before, my brother-in-law in Michigan paid me to make him some masks. (I wasn't going to charge him, but he insisted on paying me - he's generous to a fault). He has a larger than average head and was finding that the elastics broke on the standardly available masks, so had been wearing one of the ones I had made for my sister, to the point where it was getting ragged. So, I made and mailed his custom made masks, plus some ear savers and a couple of extra masks for my sister. I made the mistake of just sending them through as small packet, no tracking. And then we waited and waited. As the weeks went by, I finally decided to make him a new bunch of masks to replace the ones that had gone missing. This time, I determined to send them in a trackable parcel and to make it more difficult to lose, I decided to include the placemat set I hadn't yet finished for my niece, this sister's daughter, who lived nearby. That way the parcel would be bigger. But I had to finish the set first, which I did.  And I had the parcel all packed up and addressed in my truck, ready to mail when I got off work. Then I got the text from my sister that they got the masks! Seven weeks, that's how long it took! So, now I have some oversized masks that I should probably try to sell on our local buy and sell Facebook group. Plus the box that I originally had the placemat set in is now too big without the masks. I need to find a smaller box before I can mail it. But at least it's done.

Looking at them altogether like this, I think they are just too busy. The print is too big and if I had to do it over again, I would have selected different fabrics. The focus fabric in the centre is fine, and the other fabric doesn't look too bad on the table runner, but almost overwhelming on the placemats. However, spread out on a table, it won't look quite so bad either. See the individual placemat at the top of this post. But, it's still too busy. Smaller prints would have worked much better. 

If my niece gets tired or dizzy from looking at them, she can always turn them over. 

(I really love this backing fabric and wouldn't blame my niece if she primarily uses this side. LOL). I quilted them using the Poinsettia Fantasia pantograph from Meadow Lyon. I wasn't entirely happy with it, because, to me, the poinsettias came out too abstract looking. If I ever choose to quilt poinsettias again, I think I will look for a different pantograph. I never took a close up of the quilting for that reason. 

Next on the UFO agenda was my grandson's dinosaur quilt, Dinosaur Days. Again, I don't remember when I first bought it. My grandson was old enough to express to the clerk in the store where I bought the kit that the T Rex in the panel was Grandpa B___ (my ex-husband). 😄 (I still find that incredibly amusing). But it was long enough ago that Damian didn't remember I was making it. And this year, I determined to get it finished for his birthday, August 30. Thank the Lord, I was able to find all of the pieces (in different locations in the studio) and the pattern and the backing fabric. 

Isn't this amazing fabric? Every once in awhile, I find a piece of fabric that it so appealing that I'd like to just disappear into it and live happily ever after. The scenic fabric in Wintry Woods is another such fabric. Unfortunately, like most directional fabrics, I had to do a vertical seam to keep the scenery going in the same direction as the quilt top, since the quilt top was directional as well. Not a favourite thing for longarmers to do, but it's not the first time I've had to do it. 

Getting home from work one day, while I had it on the longarm frame, the light coming in the window was just perfect to highlight the triceratops in the quilting.

I never did get a picture of the stegasaurus because it didn't show up as well as the triceratops. However, my grandson was impressed that even the stitching was dinosaurs in his new quilt. I used Dino Jungle from Urban Elementz for the quilting. With this pantograph, I had the opposite problem from Poinsettia Fantasia. It was too detailed and accurate. All of those points, angles and corners made for very tedious and time-consuming quilting. I'm happy with the results, but what a lot of work! I couldn't help but think that an apatosaurus would have been much simpler to quilt than stegasauruses and triceratops! Again, if I ever do another dinosaur quilt, I will likely look for a different pantograph. I think Dave's Dinosaurs gives sufficient detail to make the dinosaurs recognizable without being so time-consuming.

Once the quilt was done, I had to find a place to take its picture. I have a sloping front lawn, and with my tallest stepladder on the public sidewalk, I was able to get a full-length portrait. 

This quilt is 76x96", so a generous twin bed size or a skimpy double. Here it is on my double bed. 

Admittedly, it doesn't look great with the pink-flowered bedskirt, but Damian isn't going to have to worry about a bedskirt. I bought Damian's bed when he was a toddler and had "graduated" from a crib. It's got a thin mattress and is fairly low to the ground. It's a good, safe bed for a small child, but this quilt is really too wide for it and will be dragging on the floor. However, in a few years time, we will get him a full box spring and mattress and the quilt will fit fine. And the good thing about this quilt is, because the dinosaurs are realistic and not toy-looking, it's not limited to just being appropriate for small children. 

One oddball thing I found about this pattern: it showed the side dinosaur borders with the dinosaurs facing in, not out. So when hanging like this, the dinosaurs would be upside down! Obviously, I chose not to follow that part of the pattern. 😃 And I'm going to keep this pattern around as one that might work well with other panels and their coordinating fabrics. 

Country Christmas

When I discovered this panel and the coordinating pillow panel, I decided that I had to have it and hopefully make a relatively quick Christmas quilt. That was sometime before Christmas and, well, you know what they say about the best laid plans... I just didn't get a chance to work on it until March of this year. And now here it is almost May and I'm finally blogging about it. 

I realized that I likely would not be able to match the reds or greens in the panel with alternate fabrics, so I chose two Christmas prints with a black and a white background to create the blocks to fill in the spaces around the panel. I selected the Anna's Choice Quilt block from one of my books of quilt blocks, and created it without a pattern. Not really difficult since it is just 16 HSTs. And they are 16" blocks. 

At the same time as when I bought the panels, I was able to find this fabric, which was perfect for the backing. 

Isn't it awesome? You can see the quilting in this picture, too. Rather than use a Christmas-themed pantograph, I chose the Cowboys pantograph. 

This pantograph had no "shadow lines" to help line it up when advancing the quilt, so I had to add my own. 

I'm quite pleased with how it turned out and now I have a jumpstart on next Christmas. 

A Homemade Christmas

I don't know if it's because I'm getting older or less organized or because being short-staffed at work has impacted my outlook at home, but Christmas came much too fast this year. I didn't get anywhere near as much done as I had hoped, but sometimes I think I expect too much of a single-homeowner who works full-time. 😉 However, I was still able to get some of the important things done. Like spending time with my grandson. That's always high on my priority list. 
This year I determined to make some homemade Christmas tree decorations with him. I have a 4' green tree that I bought to use as a prop when I was teaching his Sabbath School class at church, and I was using a camping theme. I'm no longer teaching his class, and I didn't have any decorations for this tree, so this seemed like the perfect vehicle for his homemade decorations. I had bought some clear plastic baubles at Walmart in the after Christmas sales last year. I used one of the bigger ones to make a fabric decoupage bauble for my tree 

and he used a smaller one for his tree (with Grandma's help, of course).

He also filled some of the baubles

but you have to be cautious in filling them, lest the filling have too much weight for the hook. And let me forewarn you that if you try to fill them with those tiny styrofoam snowballs, static makes them stick everywhere!

Covering a styrofoam ball with pom-poms made another ornament.

The majority of the ornaments are salt-dough, cut with cookie cutters,

dried in the oven, painted and sealed with acrylic sealant spray. 

We also collected pine and spruce cones and made them into ornaments with glitter paint and ribbons. 

This one is felt glued to foam and decorated with sparkles.

I have lots more craft supplies for making ornaments, but this was sufficient for this year. However, as I was determined that, aside from the lights, and possibly the tree topper (I have an angel from my childhood tree that is probably around 50 years old that I was planning on using on this tree, but I never got all of my decorations out of the garage), all of the decorations on this tree would be homemade, I had to decide what to do about a tree skirt and garlands. I wanted Damian to be involved in as much of the production as possible, so I googled for a loom-knitted tree skirt, as I know he can loom knit. I found a pattern, but the instructions were kind of vague and left me guestimating how to make it. I bought some Bernat Blanket yarn as Damian loves soft, fuzzy things like blankets and stuffies, and got him started on the knitting loom. I hadn't counted on the attention span of a 5-year-old and knew we'd never get it done on time for Christmas, unless we had started way back in January. I finished three of the wedges myself and stitched them together, 

but I really didn't feel that they were going to work. They were lopsided and the space in the middle was going to be much too large. Knitted tree skirts are actually quite rare, so I googled and found this crocheted Snowflake Ripple Christmas tree skirt pattern that I figured would work and produced this. 

I had to abbreviate the pattern because I was using such bulky yarn and was making this for a small tree. Here it is under the tree: 

Much nicer looking, in my opinion, than the first pattern I tried. I used the leftover yarn to make the garlands, combining the red and cream for one garland and a gold tinsel-y yarn from my stash with the cream for the second garland. So, there you have it: Damian's Christmas tree. He also said that he would like a white tree, since Grandma has a white tree. So I brought in my white fibre optic tree, also about 4' tall. I never did get around to decorating it, but he was quite impressed with the fibre optics nonetheless. 

Meanwhile, I was busy trying to get some dishcloths and hot potholders completed. Unfortunately, knitting and crocheting dishcloths exacerbated my carpal tunnel syndrome, so I had to employ my splints in order to get as many done as I wanted to. 

This isn't the total haul. I actually made two more, but they had already been given away by the time I took this picture. And I still want to make one more. 

Surprisingly enough, I was initially only able to find one of the big balls of Bernat Handicrafter cotton in this Mistletoe colourway in our local Walmart. And nothing in a solid red or green. I find that the pattern shows up better when using solids than when using a variegated yarn. Walmart later got in some smaller balls in different holiday colours, which are rather expensive compared to the non-Christmas yarns, but I was able to find one more big ball of this yarn. You can tell it was from a different dye lot as the green is more faded-looking in the second ball. Most of the dishcloths have been knitted:

these 5, plus the two that have already been gifted. Each pattern is different as I'm working my way through this book:

 I'm not loom-knitting, however. I'm using needles as I find needles are faster than the loom, and the pegs are too far apart for worsted yarn on most of my looms. It makes the stitches much too loose. 
These are the crocheted dishcloths: 

Top left is the Linen Stitch dishcloth. Interesting that it's produced a sort-of plaid pattern when using this stitch. You can tell that I started the new ball about one third of the way up. Bottom left and top right are variations of Cable Stitch dishcloths. And the bottom right is one I just made up. The final one is Tunisian Crochet 

using the diagnonal stripe pattern from the Button Down Pillow found in this book: 

All of these dishcloths look like they could use a good blocking, but why would I block something that's just going into the dishwater? 
When I couldn't find a second ball of the Mistletoe Ombre, I took a brief detour with the Psychedelic colourway. 

I can't remember whether I got one or two dishcloths done in this yarn (and I don't know where they are at the moment), but when I found the second ball in the Mistletoe Ombre, I decided to continue with that colour as these are Christmas gifts. I've used the Psychedelic before, but didn't end up with this problem: 

The dye was colouring my hands, so, before I gift these dishcloths I will have to make sure I give them a dye-fixing bath. I intend to finish the whole ball, however, and then do them all at once. 

When I went to Damian's school Christmas program, I saw posters up for their pajama day the Friday before Christmas, where the students wear pajamas to school. (I have no idea if the teachers do or not...). So, in the midst of all the other Christmas hubbub, I threw together some awesome and warm pj's for my grandson from McCall's pattern M6224.

In order to complete them, I had to find my black binding, which necessitated dumping out multiple rough totes of fabric, creating havoc in my living room.

As it turned out, it wasn't a school day for Damian. He's in kindergarten and only attends Mondays, Wednesdays and alternate Fridays. So, no pajama day for him. I gave him his new pajamas for Christmas instead. 
Damian and I also took time to decorate a gingerbread house. Being a newbie builder, I incorrectly decided to put the decorations on first before building the house.

I promised him a carrot cake which will be our "plot" on which to build our house. I'm waiting for his next visit to complete this part. 

Next project was quilt-as-you-go potholders. These two have already been gifted.

Might seem bizarre, but I find that there are certain colours that don't show up well when photographed on a horizontal surface with a cell phone. These look kind of yellowed out to me. 

See: when I take the picture vertically the potholder doesn't look yellowed out like the ones in the previous photograph. 

Last time I did these potholders, I used cat fabric for the centre. This time I decided to go with these cardinals. However, I cut the cardinals out smaller than the cats, with the result that a lot of the corners are not covered by the third round of fabric strips and I have to add a little tiny piece to the corner. Frustrating, but I'll try to remember for next time. 

I've got 9 more potholders to add binding to, and one complete potholder to do and then I'll be done. 

Except that for 2018, I plan on starting in January, doing one or two a month, and then I'll be sailing come December.