Fabric Acqusitions

 Friday I took a trip up north a couple hours, I took a friend long for some much needed chatting/ear bending time while shopping.  Yes shopping, fabric stores and quilt shops.  I felt the need to replenish a few quilt panels for fall for next year. You will have to tilt your head for the one on the left:0  But won't they make great little wall hangings?  It will be hard not to dig right in but I need to concentrate on Christmas/winter items right now. 

One more beauty, the fall wreath grabbed me too.  But then onto Christmas with a red truck in a wreath, on no I wasn't going to pass that up even though I have plenty of Christmas/winter panels to use. There might have been some yardage in red and greens bought too, but I already folded them and put them away. They were just staples to replenish the stash.

And then I finished up this cardinal panel wall hanging.

Everything from the gold out I added.  

Just look at that cardinal eyeing you!

Blogger is messing with me and hardly any of your comments come into my inbox anymore.  Trying to figure out what to do, if you know please let me know.  A suggestion was to reset my notifications but I don't even see where to do that!  Any help is appreciated:)

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Monday Making

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The cardinal panel is finished

I know some of you were anxious to see how I quilted the cardinal panel.  Last week was piecing it and the quilting and binding was finished over the weekend.  If you missed how I pieced it you can find it HERE.  

The tree and trunk received some wishbone quilting while the white background has a simple stipple. 

The red above the tree asked for holly leaves;)

The red border of the panel had these fan shapes so I followed the lines of them.  Anything else would have distracted from the fans or caused chaos within the border!  The center, of course I did my favorite all over design of hook swirl. 

As you can see the checkerboard received my favorite design for these squares-the Terry Twist design.  When it came to the black outer border I was stumped for a while.  And then I let the fabrics tell me what to do.  I made the fan shapes(from the red border) and added the swirl from the black fabric inside the fan. 

And the whole thing.

This week I need to decide what design to make for my November Island Batik project and then get the fabric pulled.  I always have so many ideas swimming around in my head that it is hard to settle on one!! 

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Cardinals

As you know, I love the challenge of working with panels.  So many don't but I really enjoy creating different borders to add interest to the panel.  Tuesday I found myself needing to do something besides snowman table runners and snowmen.  So I dug went through my winter panels and decided to play with this cardinal one.  This is what it looked like when I began.  In order to get everything squared up and measured to where I needed it to be, I trimmed it right to the outer edge of the red border.

Then I went to my stash to find just the right fabrics in scale and color.  Yes I had to pull out a few of each in order to get just the ones I wanted, a red, a green and a white. And a black with gray swirls-it was the perfect match to the black with snowflakes behind the cardinals.   After I get it quilted I'll show you close ups of the fabrics.   Then off to EQ to mock it up.  I added a one inch(finished) border in black next to the panel red.  That will bring it up to the size I need to make the 2"(finished) checkerboard come out.   Or so I thought...if you look carefully at the very end of the checkerboard they are cut off:(  I just wasn't going to start over so I carried onward, it's not the end of the world!!! 

Here is why it didn't work out.  In EQ I mocked it up with the 1" black borders all around the panel. And then changed my mind when piecing it because if I left it that way the bottom would have another black 2" border in addition to the 1" already in place.  I didn't like that look, so off came the 1" black border. 

After making  2 1/2"  x 5 1/2"  flying geese and a trunk I had a tree.  And topped it off with a tone on tone red.  I might quilt some holly leaves in the red.  The final border is the back with grey swirls in a finished 2 inch.  In case you are curious what method I use to make flying geese, I love using the Fons and Porter geese ruler. 

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