Gone To The Beach: 01.05.2015

Monday, January 5, 2015

Moving On

Twelve Days of Christmas

Hi guys!

Did you notice? "Everyone'' on line is posting lists and pictures of all they accomplished in 2014. It's inspiring! It's---intimidating. I do admire them all so much. But me? I don't think I finished a single quilt this past year and I am too lazy to go back and look.
Mo the Pug arrived on June 8 and somehow took over my world. [Not that I'd finish dozens of quilts/ samplers/ rugs/ cranes, Hunter! in year. Or in a lifetime...] Does training a puppy count on the scale of Things I Got Done?

Mo is potty trained and leash trained; he wears his coats and hats, sits nicely in his car seat. He obeys simple commands, though he does do that annoying pug thing of thinking about obeying---big lull---and then he comes or sits etc. He can sit up and ''beg'', fetch, shake hands, do high five. He is learning to dance on his hind legs. He does not Heel. Ever. It's on my to do list. Really.

Here he is napping in the basket where I keep [kept] all my quilt rulers and templates.

Mo takes up a LOT of time.
So anyway, moving on with life in 2015. During the hols I copied the instructions for Temecula Quilt Company's Twelve Days of Christmas mini quilt.here I knew I wouldn't have time to keep up and make a block every other day, so I saved the project for New Years Day while my family was away skiing.
Here is Mo on NYE, looking already hungover!

For the tiny Christmas quilt I wanted to use all my favorite scraps of red and green calico [with less than stellar results, what a hodgepodge in 3" squares]. The design wasn't exactly right for scraps however, lots of ''big'' squares, rotary cut, ha ha ha, into smaller increments. I don't rotary cut. I love my scissors.
Auditioning the results so far:
I love this larger scale print and had intended it to be the slashing or ''background''. It was a remnant found at Joann's when my friend L and I made it there in early November for our annual Christmas outing.

But no. Does not work.

I love this choice but I didn't want to waste one of my favorite fabrics in a so-so mini, chopped up as sashing.

Red is---too red, though I love this red holly leaf print.

I like this tan, looks ''prim".

I ended up eking the sashing out of this tiny square of tan and green ditsy print. Red cornerstones. Nope, the directions say 17 pieces for the sashing, but that doesn't include a border.

Back to the planning board, aka kitchen counter. I used this fabric because 1- I love it, I'm a sucker for prints with ''picotage"--- tiny dot ground; and 2-the design looks like splattery snow; 3- its larger scale and busy-ness counteract, I hope, the garbled look of the tiny blocks themselves. I changed block six to the tree, which didn't help the overall appearance, but made it fun, to me. What's a Christmas quilt without a Christmas Tree?

Machine quilting. The big holly pattern on the back. Red striped binding: "candy canes".

I'm not sure when Twelve Days will get done. Story of my life these days.

BTW- The mini is called Twelve Days of Christmas because each block has one more piece, ie, Day One = one, Day two = 2 pieces, Day three = four etc etc. My tree block has six pieces as required. I wanted to do a house block for block Twelve but I just couldn't make it work.

What do you think?

love

lizzy

gone to the beach