"Vintage Christmas" Hand Appliqued Quilt

I just love Christmas time, don't you?  So much cheer in the air and beautiful decorations everywhere!  This quilt is my favorite Christmas decoration.  I made it some time back, but have been saving it to show here until Christmas time.

It's called "A Vintage Christmas" and the pattern is by Anne Sutton of Bunny Hill Designs.  I used a fabric kit to make it, so I can't tell you what the fabric collection is called or who designed it.  It finished up at 53" by 55".  I hand appliqued the designs and then embellished it with beads, hand-embroidery, ribbons, etc. to make it a real treasure!  There are a lot of photos, so I will make some smaller, but I want to show all the detail this quilt contains.


This is the whole quilt:

Block #1:  covered buttons on the holly leaves on top of the house, hand-embroidered window panes, and bead for doorknob.

Block #2 is a Snowman cake topper with ruched ribbon around his neck, beads for eyes, hand-embroidered hands/arms and around his nose, beads for buttons and rick-rack around the cake.

Block #3 is a hanging ornament ... covered button for center of bow and hand-embroidered hanger.













Block #4 is a hanging vase holding candy canes ... covered button for center of bow and hand-embroidered hanger.

Block #5 is a vase/bowl holding three ornaments and a bird ... bead for bird's eye, hand sewn ornament hangers and decorator cording around the top of the vase.

Block #6 is really 2 blocks ... flowers and leaves and bells ... covered buttons for center of bow and the ringers on the bells.

Block #7 is a wrapped present with a bow and label ... covered button for center of bow, hand sewn string for label and hand inked label.

Block #8 is a Partridge in a Pear Tree ... hand embroidered bird legs, stems and bird neck design, gathered ribbon with tiny clear beads, and a bead for the bird's eye.

Block #9 is a Christmas Tree in a picture frame ...ribbon topper is stitched at the top and the flowing effect of the streamers is obtained by stitching clear beads to hold each one in a couple of places.  Each outer corner of the frame has a hand-embroidered floral design with tiny beads on the sides ... really beautiful.  See close-up in the next photo.

Block #10 is an ice skate ... hand-embroidered hanger and skate lace, beads for shoe buttons.

Block #11 is a village church and tree ... hand-embroidered window panes and bead doorknob.

Block #12 is a sheep under an arch ... covered button on the top of the arch, bead for eye, ribbon with tiny gold beads.

Corner blocks ... Stars and beaded holly leaves with a covered button in the center.













 
Top border Sleigh filled with presents ... ribbons and bows ... one covered button.

Reindeer 1 ... bead for eye, hand-embroidered antlers and reins.

Reindeer 2 ... bead for eye, hand-embroidered antlers and reins.

Reindeer 3 ... bead for eye, hand-embroidered antlers and reins.








I quilted it using the "stitch in the ditch" method and stitched around all the applique.


I hope this quilt makes you feel as festive and ready to decorate your house for Christmas as it does me!

Merry Christmas to you all and a blessed New Year!

Quilts Sew Shabby

"Dresden Pinwheels" Quilt

No, this quilt is not the Christmas quilt I promised to show ... I'll show it later.  This quilt is one of my favorites and also one of the oldest quilts I've made.  I didn't own my wonderful craft iron then, so I ironed all the pieces with my regular iron.  I made a cardboard pattern piece for the Dresden Plate units, sprayed the edges with starch and manually pulled the fabric over the cardboard and ironed it to create the individual pieces to be sewn together for the plates, pinwheels and scallops.  Boy, did that take forever!  I used a saucer to make the scalloped edges. I used left over pieces of the "Paris Flea Market" fabric (which I dearly love) by 3 Sisters for Moda.  The soft colors are so soothing!  Since there were so many Dresden Plate blocks and I do get bored making the same design over and over, I added the pinwheels.  I think they make a nice accent to the quilt.

Here is the whole quilt ... the backing shows on the bottom right.

 This is a couple of close-ups of the detail in the Dresden Plates and Scallops:

The design on the backing is a city map of Paris ... really neat close-up!  The quilting is all "Stitch in the Ditch" ... sewing in all the seams.

I hope you like it!

Maybe new posting will be the Christmas quilt I promised.


Later,

Quilts Sew Shabby

"Winter Dance" Quilted Wall Hanging

This quilt is a great one to make you feel festive for Christmas ... a reindeer flying over the trees in the snow!  Every time I look at it, I feel like doing a "Winter Dance" (lol!!)...but I usually just sing "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer"!  I actually thought about giving him a covered button nose (in red, of course), but decided against that.

For this little lovely I used a quilt kit with the pattern by Robyn Pandolph and her fabric collection called "Roses de Noel".  She is a designer for RJR Fabrics.  She managed to make the traditional red and green Christmas colors look romantic!  The quilt finished up at ~50" square which is just perfect for my wall, and the fact that I put my Christmas tree there, too, just makes it perfect!

The stars are pieced into the blocks, the reindeer is appliqued onto the center and then I added some embellishments ... covered buttons (white ones for snow and red ones for highlights), tacked the ribbon to make it look like it is flowing in the wind, and even some faux crystals to make it shine!  I hope you can see them!  I added a couple of close-ups so you could see the ribbon, tacked with beads and the crystals lightly sprinkled throughout the center block ...even put one on the fancy heart.

I have never worked with such a large applique before, but I used a lot of pins to hold it in place and it worked quite well.  The next quilt I will show you is another Christmas applique one and it's quite fantastic.  Check back to take a look and see what I mean.

I'm way behind on getting my decorations up so I'd better get busy ............

Merry Christmas to all!

Quilts Sew Shabby