December stitching

Hello! Since I'm on Winter Break, I decided to jump into blog-land and show you a bit of what I've been working on lately. Although I haven't blogged much, I have been able to spend some time in the studio these past few months.

I've started a new Christmas quilt. I know, I know. I've already got several other Christmas quilts in progress. But you know how it goes: I just couldn't resist this one! And all my other ones are supposed to be Christmas gifts for other people (when I eventually finish them!). This newest one is going to be for me.

It all started when our quilt guild board (I'm the guild secretary) was talking about doing some "block lotteries." We give the parameters for a certain block, and any member who wants to can make a block. You bring the block to the meeting, put your name in a hat, and if you win, you get all of the blocks for that month. When we were talking about making Christmas blocks for our October meeting, our president mentioned a virtual bee quilt she had seen, where the blocks are various sizes. Here is a photo of that particular quilt, from Better off Thread. We decided to have our lottery blocks all be 12" finished blocks. This is the block I made for the block lottery:

I got the directions from Ellison Lane.  After I printed out her template, I realized that my Tri-Recs ruler would make the same size triangles, so I used that instead of her template.

Since I didn't win the blocks from the guild, I decided to make my own Christmas sampler. I'm making the blocks different sizes, but in multiples of 3", so it will eventually fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. I'm also using some of the more modern Christmas colors of red, green, pink, lime green, and turquoise.

Here are the blocks I've made so far. First up is a 12 X 12" improv star, with some of the polka dot fabrics that I adore :

Next is this ornament. After I trim it, it should be a 9 X 9" block. I had seen some similar ornaments, so I pretty much figured up my dimensions. The actual ornament, without the hanger, is a 6" snowball.

 Here's another of the trees inspired by Ellison Lane's tree. This time I kept the tree seams horizontal instead of angled. Since I don't need this to be a 12" block, I kept it rectangular at 9 X 12".

I really like the stack of gifts in Better off Thread's quilt, so I figured up my own measurements for each gift. This will finish at 9 X 15".

What is Christmas without hot cocoa? Here's a mug for the quilt. I found the pattern via Pinterest, that wonderful source of inspiration.You can find the free pattern here. It's a cute quilt that makes 9 different mugs, so I chose one to make. I adjusted the white borders to make this a 12 X 15" block, or I may trim some of that top border to make it a 12" square. I'll see when I get to that spot.

The last block I've made so far is this log cabin house block. It's another one which I can adjust the size down the road, depending on what I need. Right now it's 15 X 15", but it could go down to 12 X 15".

And that's all I've done so far on this Christmas quilt. I'm having fun making a large variety of blocks. Like most of my quilts, I have no deadline for it, but I would love to have it finished by Thanksgiving. Wishful thinking, I know!

I'm linking to Freemotion by the River's linky party.

Happy stitching!