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| Finished Christmas Dream Catcher |
Quiltmaker's Scrap Squad
Dream Catcher - My Christmas Memories by Donna Amos
for Nov/Dec 2011
Each year over the past ten years or so I have made a Christmas quilt.
When I first saw this pattern, I immediately thought of the stash of Christmas fabrics setting on my shelf and knew that it would become my 2011 Christmas Quilt. I have had more fun selecting the fabrics to use in this quilt than any of the quilts we have done this year.
The black with “Christmas trees” and “snow” was the first fabric selected to be the background, and then I chose all the brightly colored “packages” to go around the trees. The peppermint stripe was used in a border and for the “candies” along with the brown/gray which was the “Choclate Chips” for the cookies. In the border background, candies and cookies, are the “white sugar cookie” fabric with the red and green sprinkles. Then last but not least would be the brightly colored strings of Flying Geese “Christmas lights.”
This a paper pieced quilt, so with all the copies that I needed, I folded the paper on the sewing lines. I had pre-cut the approximate sizes that I needed, so then pinned the fabric to the back side of the paper pattern, sew the lines, pressed on the right side and trimmed the bock. 
For the way I chose to put the blocks together, it took 4 blocks with the tree fabric and 4 blocks with the various colors of the "packages"
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| 8 Paper pieced blocks |
I tried several different layouts, but ended up with this one, always trying to put some version of blue, red, yellow and green in each quarter of the quilt.
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| Checking layout before sewing |
After the blocks were sewn together, I press all seams open to make a flatter surface for the quilting, expecially where the "candy" came together at the centers.
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| back of quilt, seams pressed open |
The flying geese units were made, not as paper pieced units, but using my Fons & Porter Flying Geese ruler. It is so accurate and doesn't waste any fabric. It was easy to measure the paper piece pattern and cut the geese to the proper size. I thought they made a good string of Christmas Tree lights!
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| Dream Catcher before quilting |
For the backing, I selected some Christmas fabrics from my stash. They turned out cute enough that I now have a two sided quilt. I also put a sleeve at the top so the quilt can be used as a wall hanging.
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| Backing on Dream Catcher |
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| Dream Catcher as a wall hanging |
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| Or used as a sofa throw |
Check out other versions of Quiltmaker's Dream Catcher the Scrap Squad blogs.
I love the use of color you picked. Something I would do. This is Eye Candy sa my husband would put it to me. Great job.
ReplyDeleteYour Dream Catcher is lovely!
ReplyDelete