Small and Smaller Half-Square Triangles

This challenge was given to our guild in November, and I took pictures of the results at our December meeting.

First, this is my quilt.

I spent Election Day embroidering the center, then added the half-square triangles to the outside.  The half-square triangles finish at 1/2 inch.

The challenge for the guild was to make anything using half-square triangles.  These are the projects they showed at the meeting.  First was Lyn's.  She always adds embroidery and embellishments to her projects.

 I can't remember this woman's name, but I do love the embroidered ornaments.  She hadn't quite finished putting the borders on, but I think it will be great.

Then, Anne showed her quilt.  She used scraps of her Christmas batiks.  Fun!

Kim showed us her project.  Now, these are tiny!  I think she said there were 56 in there.

Then, Kris showed us her pin cushion made with the half-square triangles.  She very generously gave the pin cushion to a member of the group.

So, now they are working on their churn dash blocks, and I will be working soon on the next quilts for January.

Finally, a picture of the quilts I made for Christmas gifts this year.  Each of my children, and my husband, all received a quilt for Christmas.  Richard wanted a strip quilt, so I made one from a jelly roll of Snowbird Batiks.  The other four were 2-layer minky quilts.  They were so excited to wrap up in these.

As the weather gets colder here, these quilts will come in handy for everyone!

Christmas here was quiet, but also very nice.  We will do fondue for New Year's Eve, and I hope to continue piecing my latest project as we move into the new year.  Happy New Year all and

Keep Sewing!

Small and Smaller Churn Dash

Today's quilts are for the Sew Small Guild I belong to.  I have asked them to make a small or smaller churn dash quilt.  I provide the pattern, then they can play with it and change it up if they want or make it the same as mine.

This is the small one.  It finishes at 22" square.  I used charms for the color fabric, and lots of background fabric to go with it.  I found the cornerstone and border/binding fabric in my stash.  I had enough that it also went on the back.

Next is the smaller quilt.  This one finishes at 8 3/4 inches square.  I used a bit of a fat-eighth bundle I bought on a shop hop in May of 2013.  I had to buy more background fabric, and since it is from  Maywood Studios, I found it at my local quilt shop.

The half-square triangles in the churn dash are 1/2 inch finished.  I also learned that by strip piecing my sashing units, I could work more easily with small pieces.  I sewed a 2" strip of background to a 7/8 inch strip of red.  Then I cut them into 7/8 inch segments.

Now for some catch up.

I had some fun with this customer's quilt.  She didn't want a lot of quilting, and she wanted to emphasize the applique.  I think this captured it pretty well.  The border design is fairly new to me, but I've seen it a lot around the internet.  Here is a close-up:

Then, the whole quilt:

This quilt was also for a customer.  I really liked doing the pattern in the center of the yellow.

There was a lot of ruler work in both of these quilts.  

Then, I also finished a quilt of my own.  These blocks were part of a friendship exchange several years ago.  They all finished different sizes, so they created a challenge to put them together. I put them together, then put the top away and forgot about it.  This summer, I found it in the bottom of my batting scraps box.  It had the backing and binding fabric with it.  

Here is a close-up of the quilting.  I really just tried to play and choose different designs as I went.  It took me more time than I had planned, but I really like it.

I bought the backing fabric before I owned a longarm quilting machine.  So, I had not purchased enough.  But, I had purchased some fabric, just because, and it fit the other quite well, so I pieced the back like this:

I intentionally off-set the piecing so it wouldn't matter on the back if it wasn't centered.

Next, I finished our guild's mystery quilt last May, except I didn't want to do the applique.  I toyed with the idea of coloring the fabric, after I had quilted the flowers into the quilt.  My friend Lyn took it home and embroidered the flowers in and added yo-yos to the quilt.  She brought it back just a couple of weeks ago, so here are the pictures.

Enjoy the pictures.  I hope you are sewing.  I try to every day, and some days are better than others. Are you working on Christmas giving?  I hope to have pictures soon of my Christmas sewing.  Until then...

Keep Sewing!