Saturday, May 7, 2016

My Springtime Christmas Tree

My latest project is from the cover of Simply Moderne magazine Issue #3. The quilt is "Oh Christmas Tree," designed by Wendy Williams.
I love the bright springtime feel to this quilt.
It could be just a flowering tree with happy birds.
This is what the reindeer do in the off season. :)

If you know ME then you know I don't like triangles.
So I've changed the border to squares! Yay for squares!

Fun fabrics will make this quilt shine.



I couldn't find the background fabric (Moda Sweetwater Road 15 Vanilla Main Street) that was used in Wendy's quilt so I'm substituting a sweet print (Downton Abbey  Pattern 7331 by Andover Fabrics) and by making the lines go horizontally it made orienting the branches of the tree a breeze!

The outer stars are all from the Kaffe Fasset line of fabrics.

My flowers are not wool. I chose fun fabrics and fussy cut the centers.

My design wall in progress... All appliqué is just pinned on to get a balance of color and spacing.

I just love this "Black-winged Redbird"! 
(In Maryland we have a bunch of Red-winged Blackbirds.)
The flower below the red bird is from a Vera Bradley fabric.

All the birds went on first.

These flowers and birds are all sewn.

Then the leaves are sewn.

When making the reindeer eyes.....I cut up some gecko fabric....

The reindeer antlers are the only hand stitching on the entire quilt!!

Sasha was inspecting the lower border as I was pinning the top row of stars on.

This is the only Christmas fabric in the quilt. 
And I think it's funny that the star points are a Kaffe fabric called Jupiter! 
Maybe Santa was taking a vacation on Jupiter in the off-season.

This is the gecko fabric that I borrowed eyes from for the reindeer.

What a HAPPY bluebird!

Quilt top is done!

Finally time to quilt!

To keep the vertical quilting lines "straight" I ironed a strip of freezer paper on the top and quilted a wavy line along each side.
Finished!

The back is a pretty English fabric with a Christmas ornament print called "Cool Yule Baubles" by The Henley Studio, Makower UK that I got on ebay.co.uk!


Linking to Finish it Friday (I did finish this on Friday!) at Crazy Mom Quilts.








4 comments:

  1. This is so fun. I love it! Thanks for sharing it and linking up with crazy mom quilts.

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  2. This is so fun. I love it! Thanks for sharing it and linking up with crazy mom quilts.

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  3. Love this quilt. Are your 'flowers' just raw edges, before sewing? They look quite stiff so I wondered if you had a backing on them. Great work :)

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  4. What a beautiful quilt! And you seemed to have so much fun putting it all together. Congratulations on a great finish.

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