Toadstools!

 I hope everyone had a great Holiday I have to say we definitely had a good time around here. We ate to much and played to hard it has been nice and cold too. These are the quilts I made for our family this year. we have a thing for Super Mario Brothers at our house and so I felt it was appropriate to make a couple of toadstool quilts for our house. I used the Cut to Pieces Super Mario quilt a long pattern as my jumping off point you can find the pattern here: Super Mario Quilt Along I love the idea of making the whole quilt but I needed to be done with this in November and since I started looking in November I decided to make two of the blocks and super size them. I used the same grid as the original quilt along pattern I just cut four inch squares instead of one and a half inch squares. The total dimension of the quilt ended up being 63x63. As an afterthought I do wish I would have cut  the squares a little bit smaller such as 3 7/8 so I could have put Minky on the back with out piecing it. These did turn out to be a great throw size though and they have been a lot of fun so far. I chose to quilt the quilts differently just because I wanted a little variety I like things to coordinate but not necessarily feel like a set. Here is a close up of the quilting and some pictures of the red toadstool as well.

                        Square Dance Pantograph by Anne Bright above

                                    Clouds pantograph by Anne Bright above

What Have You Learned

 I can't wait to show all the fun quilts I quilted and pieced over the Christmas season but since most of them are gifts for people I am going to wait until after Christmas to post them. This is a quilt that I put together when I first started piecing years ago it was a great quilt to practice quilting on when I first got my quilting machine. I wanted a simple quilting design as the pattern of the quilt is busy and so I did a large meander. I hope if I have learned anything over my years it's every piece of fabric doesn't have to have a pattern on it and how to match fabrics a little better! What have you learned?

A Little Mini Quilt

What can you make from one charm pack? How about a mini quilt. This was a mini quilt pattern from Primitive Gatherings  called "Tiny Tumbler" and I have to say it was so much fun to make and to quilt. The total dimensions of this quilt are 17"X17.5" which is a little different from the pattern because I added a little border, each of the tumblers is only 2" tall. I took this to a quilting  event at my local quilt shop and it was suggested that I quilt a tree on it.  This is definitely not a design that I would have originally tried but I am pretty happy with how it turned out and it feels fight for the quilt. I have considered doing a back ground fill just to even out the density of the quilting. The piece itself does hang quite nicely on the wall so it hasn't been a huge priority.  Here is a closer look at the quilting:

A Quick Christmas Craft

This was a fun little Christmas sewing craft that is Perfect for a Hostess gift. I put the first letter of the day of the week just so these could be given if  I needed a last minute gift. If you knew who you were giving these to I thought it could be cute to put their initials on them. I fused Heat N Bond Light and cut my letters out with The Accuquilt. I used pre-washed flour sack towels from Wal-Mart. They come in a pack of five so to do the days of the week you need two packs.  This was a pretty fast and simple gift and they turned out so cute.