Warm Winter Greetings

 It's not like I am ready for winter by any means, but that is the name of this panel:)  There are so many fun panels for all seasons and occasions out there.  And I might just happen to have a few, okay maybe more than a few in my stash.  I dug out the fall and winter ones last weekend and I just couldn't get inspired as to how I wanted to finish them.  I knew I had done this particular one before so I checked back at my photos.  The decision was made to make it the same but use different fabrics.  

The first thing with a panel is to square it up.  Sometimes that is easy and sometimes it is hard.  This one didn't need too much fusing with it.  The only thing I needed to do was make sure my checkerboard border would come out correctly in the red and white formation and not have two reds or two whites together. 

Picking the fabrics is fun for me.  The method I use is to look at the panel and then pull fabrics from my stash that are the same or close to the same coloration.  Then audition them for prints, like size and shape.  I tend to use a lot of tone on tone fabrics.  For this particular panel I chose a red tone on tone with polka dots and an off white for the checkerboard. 

I was thrilled to discover I could use the green plaid that I had just bought from that fabric moving sale a couple weekends ago.  It was only a half yard piece and worked perfectly.  That was for the second border I added.  The the third border was the red that was used in the checkerboard border.  In the corners I did a half square triangle in the red and green and it makes it look like a churn dash around the panel. I purposely made the green and red borders a different size for added interest. 

Of course I had fun with the quilting. Swirls on the panel make it look like wind swirling around.  The green plaid has ribbon candy, it didn't show up the best with green thread, but you can still see the texture. And the red outer border and HST corners received easy straight line quilting. 

Another piece of the moving sale fabric made it into the back.

Even though I have a ton more panels, it feels great to have used one!  Well technically I have used two, I did another panel the very next day, but my camera battery totally died and I am awaiting a new one so I can get back to photographing. 

Liking with Put Your Foot Down, and Finished or Not Friday