It’s Christmas Time….almost!!!

This past week my small quilting group got together to exchange gifts.  I had known about this for over 2 months, but just couldn’t wrap my head around what I wanted to do.

Then, I remembered a blog post by Emma in Australia where she had machine quilted ornaments, resulting in this gorgeous quilt…..

I had been very taken with it and decided to play with something similar for my gift.   I started out by free-handing some ornaments and practicing my quilting….

As it ended up, I wasn’t that happy with the resulting product so decided to make a few changes.

I got online and found drawings of lots of interesting ornaments.  I cut a few out and started playing with an arrangement.   I quickly found that I wasn’t happy with vertical arrangement so started playing with a horizontal one…..

I fused a thin interfacing to the fabric, traced the designs on it and started looking for appropriate threads…..

I did the first round of thread painting, only to find that there was a lot of puffiness to the piece……

SO….here is another opportunity for creativity…..I decided to Trapunto the ornaments to give them some more dimension (and to relieve the puffiness).  I used two layers of a high-loft batting…..

…..and then basted it with a wool batting and started quilting.   When I got ready to quilt the background, I had planned to do an overall pattern but was afraid that it would be too flat so opted for straight lines instead.

Here is the final product…..

…..with a few close-ups…..

And, excitingly, my friend Deb was the winner!!

In return, I received this wonderful Christmas pillow from Brenda……

Thanks Ladies for a FUN evening!!!