October Completion - Quilted Ornament

Here is the little Christmas ornament I made for Vickie's pink & green Christmas tree. It's my October completion for the one project a month challenge.

This was my first attempt at working in miniature, which poses challenges all its own. I think it looks like a tiny little quilt... with beads 8) And at least I know that Vickie won't have another one like it despite her thousands of Christmas ornaments. And she's a tremendous crafter too, so I think she will appreciate it.

Quilted Xmas Tree Ornament - the next steps

I'm still working on the pink & green Christmas ornaments. Last night I paper-pieced the side sash pieces, because I really didn't want to deal with 1/4" square cornerstones by themselves. Here you can see the two rows of blocks next to the pre-made sashing.

This sashing was really easy to make by paper piecing because I just measured it out on graph paper and luckily all the seams fell on grid lines. You can see I labeled the paper "P" for pink and "G" for green. It's surprisingly easy to get messed up, even on a simple thing like this!

I may have gone over the legal limit for pins per inch here. It took 12 pins for less than 5 linear inches of seam - and I had to do it four times over.

It ended up being much more accurate than it would otherwise have been without the pins though.
Now I just have to figure out what to do next. Do I bead or do I make my tiny little quilt sandwich and quilt it, then bead it? Any hints? I'm afraid if I bead it first (and I plan on LOTS of beads) then I won't be able to quilt it without running into the beads, even with my 1/4" foot. It's a worry; I guess I'll sleep on it. 8-)

Pink & Green Quilted Christmas Tree Ornaments

I'm working tiny today. I just got my secret pal gifty posted, as well as my last owed siggy, so I decided to get to work on some pink & green quilted Christmas tree ornaments that I designed in EQ6. My Sister's SIL, Vickie, decorates for Christmas in a BIG BIG way. Last year she had 9 trees decorated, each in a different theme. My DH and I have been invited to parties at Vickie's home in Green Bay the past two years (or maybe we just crashed them because we were in town) anyway, we were made very welcome by sis's inlaws, so I wanted to make Vickie a thank-you gift I know she will appreciate.


When I saw Vickie's pink & green Christmas last year I immediately thought of the pink & green quilt I had been working on, since it matched the tree perfectly. I have some fabric leftover, so I came up with these: (I wish they would lay flat for the camera, since they came out so nice and square.)

I'm going to add green 1/4" sashes and tiny little pink cornerstones. I strip paper-pieced the first seam to get these blocks really accurate, then cut them to the right length and sewed the blocks together. I plan to add the green horizontal sashes so I'll have two vertical strips of little blocks. I'm going to use large green chunks of fabric for the horizontal sashes, then cut them to fit. No sewing with 1/4" strips of fabric for me! I then plan to strip paper-piece the vertical sashes and cornerstones together first so they'll be super accurate. I don't want to work with tiny little pieces here either, so I'm not going to cut the paper-pieced strips apart until they are sewn onto the blocks. It sounds harder than I think it's actually going to be... I hope!

My second Christmas ornament is going to be a simple 3" square pink & green friendship star made with Thangles. I've made lots of friendship stars this size before, so they're not a big deal for me, not like the little quilt. I may even make two and reverse the colors.

Finally, I plan to embellish them with the pink & green beads I bought 9 months ago, when I first thought of making these ornaments.

Beads, Beads and More Beads!

I bought these beads last Friday. I love the colors. The red, gold and turquoise beads are for Christmas siggies. The pink and lime green are to make a thank you present for my sister's sister-in-law, Vickie. The last two holidays we spent in Green Bay, we were graciously included in the festivities at Vickie's home. She and Tom have a beautiful historic house, and Vickie decorates for Christmas like you would not believe. She had NINE Christmas trees this year, including one with all lime green and pink ornaments. It was gorgeous (and more sparsely decorated than the other trees). I'm going to make something quilty using the leftovers from my pink and green quilt and bead it up until it sparkles. I just haven't decided what yet.