What a Weekend! Christmas Quilting Blitz!

Christmas Tree
From our backyard.  This tree was planted after
our first Christmas in this house and had more
than doubled in height.  The tree needed to be
removed from the backyard....

So the top came into the living room :)

I had lots of help in the sewing room the weekend before Christmas.   No let me re-phrase that..... I was the help, the teacher, the mentor, the coordinator..... my sewing time was limited, I did the binding on 4 quilts, and quilted one quilt.  BUT we did get 4 quilts done in 4 days!   And this was all from stash!    The Friday evening before Christmas, we (definitely not me) had this brilliant idea to make 4 quilts for gifts!!!!!  So I put the condition, that everyone must help, and the fabric had to come from stash.

A Pillow Case

Tic Tac Toe Game

Friday night we chose fabrics, Saturday we started and finished 2 quilts (except binding), Sunday we did the other 2 quilts (except binding), created labels for 4 quilts and bound 1 quilt for Monday night.  As well we did a tic-tac-toe game and a pillow case!   Tuesday I finished up with the binding on 3 quilts.

The Tic Tac Toe Game is a free download from Craftsy.   The bag was self designed and I added the outlines from the Tic Tac Toe Pieces.  The Bunny embroidery was from Bunnycup Embroidery.

We had some friends over to so crafts....

This is the prep work we did before they came over.....

These are the completed crafts

Quilting Process:   These quilts were quilt as you go on the longarm.   First the backing and batting were loaded on the machine.  Each quilt has a different batting as these were from stash -- one has wool, one poly, one is an 80/20 and the last I think is a 100% Cotton.....   They are all the width of the backing -- and strips cut width of fabric....  and stitched down using the horizontal lock, then flipped and quilted.   The kids quilted their projects using wavy lines.... I used free hand scrolls.

I had some wonderful helpers.....

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Quilt 1: For Grampa

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Quilt 2: For Gran

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Quilt 3: For Gramma

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Quilt 4: For my Brother

Ho Ho Ho! Let's Blog Hop!

Welcome to Day 6!

Many thanks to Madam Samm at Sew We Quilt and Carol at Just Let Me Quilt for hosting this Blog Hop. It has been great getting a head start on Christmas sewing...

August 7

Cherry Blossoms Quilting Studio

From This to That

I Like To Quilt Blog

Leah @ L3Designs (you are here)

Sew Mollie Sue, Quilt Much?

Just Quilt It

Meadowbrook

Peanut’s Patchwork

Around the Homestead

Feathered Nest Studio

In The Boon Docks

MO Broker, My Creative Side

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This week my 10yo daughter and I have been working on our entries.  Our first project was a Penguin Pillow.... She drew the penguin and I turned it into a fusible applique pillow....  And I used lots of decorative stitching for quilting the borders. 

and he looked lonely so we also worked on a Polar Bear Pillow.

Here they are both together....

Also using Connecting Threads Christmas Mini Charm we made a quilt top for a table topper... Haven't decided what to back this with, or what to use for binding....  And I'm out of batting, so this will have to wait until I can get to town (or get my husband to bring some in his backpack to the island)

Thank you for making time to visit, I really appreciate it. Please visit the other blogs at the links above. They all have beautiful projects to share and perhaps a Giveaway or two. Thank you! 

FNSI and Saturday's progress

Yesterday I attended the Sewing and Craft Show and took two classes...  they were both informative but I'd wished there was some hands on classes that I was interested in taking, ok the only hands on course I wanted to take was at the same time as the longarm quilting workshop.....  I picked up a few things and a FQ pack of fabrics (sorry no pics of those as they are for a gift....).  After dinner last night we went to the fabric store for brown cotton, and the hardware store for shelf brackets...  I also prewashed the fabric last night.

Then I sat down and tried to design my two quilt designs with EQ7. I'm still strugglin with it!   I don't know why I find it so unintuitive!   I watched some EQ7 videos on YouTube that kind of explained what I'd been trying to do... now I need to try them!

Today we finally moved my big sewing desk, put the new top onto it and then my daughter and I did some sewing....  ok she sewed, I manned the rotary cutter....  this will be a baby quilt for my cousin who is due in the next few weeks...

My daughter's quilting

More photos of my daughter's quilt for her teacher....

Butterfly Wings Quilt
by my 9yo daughter for her Grade 3 Teacher

The quilt back - if you look closely one butterfly has a missing wing....

This is the "end" she started with on the pantograph.  Very "square" butterfly wings.

The last rows of pantograph - much rounder butterflies.

Sewing with my 6yo

Sewing with my 6yo...
My 6yo has difficulties keeping her pencil crayons, felts, etc organized at school... We are halfway through the year and she`s needing replacements as some of hers are broken, tiny, or missing... so today we made a special pencil case for her new pencil crayons... It has individual pockets on one side and a zippered pocket on the other.  She did some of the stitching but got easily bored...




A Mixed Sampler Quilt Along

I decided I would join... the first two blocks were straight forward. And I finished them in the first week! Now can I keep up?



























Highland Dance Sewing
I`d forgotten to pick up canvas to use as lining for the vest... so today I zipped to the store to get some.  And even better I only came home with the 0.6m of canvas that I needed.  The pattern is prepped, tried on, and the canvas is waiting to be dried on its second time through prewash...  

What`s on the longarm?  The nautical quilt is still there... not much further... back to dark blue and doing the ropes... then I get to advance to the next section!  Halfway once I get those ropes done!  Then to figure out what I`m quilting on the Mariner`s Compass... probably just echo quilting....