... and here's Block Three...

This Little Light of Mine, designed by Melissa Stramel, is Block #3 in the Celebrate Christmas Quilt-Along.

Here's mine...

The central blue fabric is hand-dyed calico.

 And a closer look at the embroidery...

When I first saw this block design, I immediately thought of The Little Match Girl.

Another block tomorrow. Yes, I really do mean it this time. I'm taking part in National Blog Posting Month - NaBloPoMo for short (see the box over on the right-hand side). I'm the 683rd person to sign up for it. I will endeavour to post every day for a month.
Starting... yesterday!

Mittens, not exactly Santa-coloured

My version of block 2 of the Celebrate Christmas Quilt-Along:

Mitten quarters were foundation pieced. The quarter-square-triangles were supposed to be as well, but I nutted out how to rotary piece them instead.

It's called Santa's Mittens, and designed by Jennifer Rodriguez.

The original block had red and white where my blue and yellow are. Yellow is the closest I could get to white in my chosen palette. You might think it's unusual to make a xmas quilt and not have any white (snow! lovely snow!), but it's summer at that time of year here, hence the flowers instead. Besides, I hardly ever use white.

So far, 23 blocks have been published, of which I have completed 16.

Celebrate Christmas Quilt-along

Have you heard about the xmas QAL over at Quilting Gallery? Basically, it's 36 designers, contributing a block design each, stretched over 12 weeks (so we get 3 per week to do). With a xmas theme. Oh, and there's some "super deals for quilters" too, like 40% off certain fabric lines at certain stores, that sort of thing. Doesn't really apply to me 'cos it's all overseas, so any savings made would be negated by the killer shipping costs. :(

The three focus fabrics

I'm taking part, despite not having a giant stash of xmas fabrics. At first I thought I'll just use some reds and greens, and a bit of cream thrown in for contrast. But then I found in amongst my greens, some olivey flowery prints which I bought last year mainly because of the price and not because they were lovely fabrics. But there's enough (I hope!) to use as the background/focus fabric. All the accompanying prints and plains match -- I used the coloured spots on the selvedge to match them up. Close enough, anyway!

The fabric palette

The first block was designed by Pat Sloan, called Pat's Red and White. My version is sewn in slightly different colours...

Pat's Red and White --- Raw-edge applique for the basket in the centre, blanket stitched by hand (only because I feel I have more control over my hands than I do my machine).

At the time I write this, I am stitching Block 12. Fifteen blocks to date have been published. I'll show block 2 tomorrow.

Cat quilt and a bag

My cat, like many others, likes to sit/lay/sleep on quilts. Which can be inconvenient, if you're in the middle of working on the quilt. So I decided to make my cat her very own quilt. It's not going to be very big - about 24" square - which will be about the right size for her to stretch out on if it's laid on the floor, or to fold/bend so she can hide under it.

So far, it's more or less just a prototype, so not made out of any fancy fabric. In fact, I've gone green and recycled, using old flannelette pajama fabric for most of it, in pinks and blues:

I've used 12 different prints/plains for the 3" squares. The border is 3" navy flannel.

The other side is going to be a bit more colourful. I'm still cutting patches out for that, so there's no pic yet.


Another project I'm working on is a quilting bag. It's supposed to be big enough to fit a quilt into, which is just what I need for an upcoming guild meeting this week. I'm going to take a quilt along for show-and-tell. Which will be fun to show it off, but at the same time not fun because I don't like public speaking. But I'll just have to get over myself and do it.

Anyway, the bag isn't finished yet, but the front and back stitching and quilting are done, so I took some progress pics:

Central panels, Chinese Coins-style, pieced from my scrap tubs. I designed this side myself.

Some of the blocks I designed myself; the others are from the original pattern, which is entitled "Patti's Quilting Bag" by Louise Audet, from Handmade magazine, vol. 26 no. 7.

One thing I've learned from this (and it's an important one) is:

Measure and mark quilting lines! Don't just trust yourself to eyeball it correctly. The bottom photo shows my wonky hand-quilting; the one above it has far more consistency in the spacing of the stitching lines. (Not necessarily the quilting stitches - I still have a long way to go, I know!)