Christmas Already?

 

When I was making the Kangamangus quilt I liked the way that six scrap slab triangles made a kind of a star.

I thought it could be fun to show them off as stars in a quilt for Christmas.

So I dug out my Christmas fabrics and made slabs, and then cut triangles. 

Here are a few of the blocks on the design wall.  I have no idea where this is going yet. Arranging them this way is too much like the Kangamangus quilt, so I will definitely change that idea up. Generally when I make a Christmas quilt I limit myself to Red, Green and Gold, but that might be a challenge in this. At any rate, I'm still playing with the idea. It will change. It's very much an idea in progress.

This is a Scrap Slab Triangle Quilt, and you can get my tutorial for them here, at my Etsy shop.

In other news, I have been following a "pre-diabetic" style diet by tracking my carbohydrate intake and doing all the other things that diabetics need to do. I have been testing my blood daily and tracking my glucose levels. 

I went through all my cookbooks (I have over 100) and separated those that listed Nutritional information for each recipe. When I am planning my meals for the week, I reach for those first.

My A1C is where it ought to be, and I have so far lost 8 pounds. It's not just about the food. It's a complicated process, but I do not want Diabetes, and am fully aware this is a diet/lifestyle I must follow for the rest of my life. Because I plan to be here to live it.

Christmas Quilts

 

Many years ago I made this Christmas "Jelly Roll" quilt for my dining room table.

The next Christmas quilt I made was this Happy Holidays wall hanging. (You can see my Nutcracker on the left.)

I made this quilt with Christmas presents during the pandemic. I swap out the pillows on the couch so they coordinate with whatever quilt I've thrown over the back of the couch.

Last year I made the small JOY pillow for the red chair.

Earlier this year I made the Noel Banner that you see when you first enter my house. I designed it to fit the space perfectly. It does that, and it looks beautiful. I'm really happy.

I'm pretty sure I'm done making Christmas quilts, but hey, you never know. I don't have a special one for my bed yet...

I haven't got the rest of the Christmas decorations up yet, but that will come. I like to do it a little bit at a time.

Two Rows

 

Not that you can tell with all the WOW going on, but the top two rows of boxes are sewn together and to each other.

The new cutting mat continues to be an absolute DREAM to work with. It is so smooth it requires barely any pressure from my rotary cutter to make a beautiful clean cut.

I will be ordering a larger mat very soon.

A Do-Over

 

Sometimes when you are so focused on one thing, you miss something else. This is a Do-Over of the Red Bird. When I made it I wanted to get the feathered edge of the angel's wing on the bird wing, but I didn't pay attention to how much "air" or negative space, was above the angel's head. In the new bird, above, I have fixed that. While I was at it I changed the color of the bird's legs and changed the beak.

This is the original bird, so you can compare the two. It isn't a big difference, but I much prefer the way the angel fills the space of the wing at the top. I know it's a little thing, but every time I looked at this bird that space bothered me, so I made a new one.

Call me crazy, I know, but I am happy I made the change.

If you are interested in making your own birds, you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. This bird is NOT PAPER PIECED.

More Boxes

 While Life is keeping me busy (I have been trying to decorate for Christmas, but last night I got sidetracked watching The Queen's Gambit), I have decided to show you bigger pictures of the boxes I made earlier, but did not show in bigger pictures. You can decide for yourselves if some of them are too dark, too light, or too bland.

This is leftover fabric from the backing and binding of the Happy Holidays quilt.

I found this Christmas fabric in a box of fabric that was given to me. Because they are complimentary colors, red and green together in one print can cancel each other out, and often look dull or dirty, so it can be tricky to use. In this case, the green trees are small enough that they don't alter your perception of the red.

This print is a variation of the background of one of Gustav Klimt's paintings. The movie about his painting of Adele Bloch-Bauer, Woman In Gold, is really worth seeing.

I made my sister a Christmas tree skirt years ago and used this as the backing. I've used the scraps in many projects since.
 

This is another fabric that came to me in a box. Vertically, this print would have made a good evergreen tree. With the other striped fabrics in the boxes on this quilt running vertically, I wanted this one to be different.

Striped prints are tricky to work with. They aren't always printed on the straight of the grain, and they aren't always parallel, so you have to make some adjustments when you want to emphasize the direction of the stripe. Striped fabric has a very interesting history.

This is the gold box that shows up as solid in photographs when seen from a distance. IRL it is clearly a print, and has some variety. Quiet boxes are necessary in the quilt to balance out the busier ones.

I have always found that if you want good reds or dark greens you should look in the Christmas section of any fabric shop or online store no matter what time of year it is. 

I think this is all the boxes.

The boxes are from a Moda pattern.

 

When More is Not Better

 

This is most likely the final layout. I know that odd numbers work best, but I'm not sure a see a place for a fifth bird. (I am NOT open for suggestions about this.)

In one of the comments recently, Lynne N asked why I did not simply use a horizontal strip looking like a ribbon to disguise the horizontal seam. The answer is simple. EACH BOX in this quilt has a vertical "ribbon." When the eye scans the quilt, all those boxes are the same size and shape. It sets up a kind of rhythm, a repetition of elements that are exactly the same (except for color). It's a rhythm I like, and have mentioned in the past. It's actually the reason why I decided to make these boxes.

If I were to insert a horizontal stripe, not only would the eye see it RIGHT AWAY since it would be a big variation in what is already here, but it would break that rhythm that I like so much. It's adding one more element and in this case, it would be a distraction.

This is also the reason why the boxes are the same size and shape and arranged in strict rows and columns, and not alternated, in rows of 6, then 5, then 6, etc., like Judy in Michigan suggested yesterday.

That rhythm is also why (I'm pretty sure) the quilt will not have a border of any kind, or any other kind of new element, like an asterisk or two or three. 

This quilt is an example of when More is Not Better (and I am having second thoughts about the fourth bird I showed you yesterday). You all know me for going over the top. When I can get away with it, I do. In this quilt, I don't want MORE STUFF. I don't think this quilt needs it.

You may not have noticed it, but there is a pattern to the arrangement of boxes. The arrangement is by color and it is fairly regular. The reds and greens are separated by a light or brightly patterned print. The red and green blocks follow a diagonal from upper left to lower right. 

That arrangement of colors is another rhythm. You are not aware of it, but your brain sees it. 

Oh! Did you catch the change I made?

I decided the little gold bird has to go. And that "solid tan" box is really cream with a gold swirly print on it. It is very noticeable in real life, but hard to photograph. I never use solids.

This is probably it.

Probably. (I'm still not sold on those round peppermint candies fabric that looks so pink...). You have to remember. I make the quilts I want to make. I liked the rhythm of the boxes, so that is the quilt I am making. You may think it would look better with any number of variations. They very well might. But that is not the quilt that I want to make. You go do your thing, it won't hurt my feelings. I'm quite sure you could turn this thing on its head sixteen ways to Sunday and make it look really cool. Not my jam.

Besides, I've already played with different sizes of boxes, trees, asterisks and birds and letters.  Been there, done that. Got the quilt to prove it.

My son said to me once, about another quilt I was making years and years ago, "Mom, you REALLY thought about this didn't you?" Yes dear. "And this," he pointed. Yup. He looked up at me. "You think about Every Little Thing?" Yeah. If it's in one of my quilts it's because I put it there (or left it there) or left it out on purpose. 

It's the Fabric, Silly!

 I tell my students all the time that the success or failure of a quilt depends on the fabrics selected.

Of course, you also have to use it to its best advantage. It you have fabric that has such a terrific design, you'd be a fool NOT to show it off. I have the same print in green on a cream background, so I was wary about using this one. But when I needed five or six more blocks, I knew I had to use it - but differently than the other box.

I was surprised to find some of this fabric at the bottom of a bin somewhere, but there was a long strip about six inches tall. However, with a little judicious cutting and stitching...

This is another piece of fabric I found folded up at the bottom of a bin. Guess what I did with it?

Can you say "fussy cut?"

Again, you have to see the potential in your fabrics.

I've been avoiding this fabric since I started making the boxes. The background of this fabric is BLACK. Not exactly in line with a Christmas quilt. Or was it? With my back up against the wall and my fabric options limited, I decided to go for it. If I was lucky, the casual viewer would think it was a dark green.

 OF COURSE I fussy cut this too.

OH, do you see that gold ribbon? 

That's not only NOT a Christmas fabric, I salvaged it from this strip set I sewed over 15 years ago.

I bypassed this fabric from my stash several times since I started this quilt. but I needed a green fabric that was NOT a boring blender, so I pulled it out and made a box.

I also decided I needed another bird.

Cornerstones... Or Not?

 

The pattern for this quilt calls for the boxes to be separated by this much space, and cornerstones placed this way. I spent a lot of time measuring this all out to see what it would look like. It didn't take me long to see that I didn't like the cornerstones.

I took them off and immediately I could see this was better. But I felt that now the boxes were too far apart.

This is probably what it looked like yesterday. But if I want this to be a couch quilt that will cover me when I take a nap on the couch, it needs to be a bit wider.

Which means I need to add another vertical row and make more boxes.

The Third Bird

 

This is the third bird. I think of holiday colors as red, green and gold. So this red and gold bird really fits.  See that wing? Hold that thought.

I had thought this fabric would make a terrific box, until I realized the scale was all wrong. The box in this picture is 8-1/2" wide. There is no way that print would work on a box that size. It's just too big and the print would be cut up and nobody would know if the box was gold or white or red. And it would grab too much attention.  HOWEVER...

Students are often aghast when I tell them to cut a hole in the middle of a perfectly good piece of fabric to get a fussy cut of whatever they want. YES! I expect you to do that. Do you want a terrific bird (or whatever) or do you want an ordinary, plain one? I know which one I prefer.

Rearranging things a bit got me to this placement of the birds, and I liked it. I don't want the birds in the corners, because there is too much white space around them and the quilt would look like it had a corner chopped off. I like the way they stand in for boxes. Actually, what I like about this pattern is the rhythm of the repetition, one shape after another, but with variation in color and pattern to break it up a bit. Then the birds add a bit of sass. Of course, I needed more boxes, and you can see how I audition fabrics.

This is the kind of fabric you have to be careful with. At first glance it is red with gold, but really it is the other way around. Set on the design wall, it doesn't look as red as some of the other red boxes.

This reads as "pink" to me, and not really Christmas-y. But I was running out of options, and there is already a box in the quilt with a pinkish ribbon, and the Amaryllis print has a lot of pink in it, so I knew I could get away with it. (Translation: it would not look totally out of place.)

 

I found this red fabric in one of the big bins I had set aside for "other projects." DAMN!

This box was made from scraps. I only had a long too-narrow piece of this green. You can hardly tell where I sewed it up.

This fabric was in a box that was given to me over 10 years ago. I did have to piece this together, and you don't have to look too hard to see where, but I tried not to make it so obvious that it stuck out like a sore thumb. There's pink in this fabric too.

So now that I have enough blocks I have to finish working out an arrangement I like. I am not sure I am going to use the border of the original pattern (in fact, I'm sure I definitely WON'T be doing it like the pattern, but that should surprise no one).

The Arrangement

 

At first blush this looked pretty good, although I'm not excited about the bird being in the exact center.

But then I shuffled. I tried to distribute the busy patterns all around and I tried to keep the mostly solid looking red and green boxes away from each other (diagonal = OK; adjacent = Not OK).

I'm still not exactly thrilled with the bird in the exact center. I guess that means I will have to make another bird (or two) and tinker a bit.

Oh. Gee. Darn.

The New Nine

 So I made my boxes...

This last one isn't part of the new fabrics I bought, but when you are rummaging through your stash for ONE MORE, you get creative and your brain opens up to possibilities. 

So you like these? Me too. Here's the pattern, although what I do from here on out won't follow the pattern.