Christmas Craft Time, Almost

I did set a goal for myself to start on Christmas projects in August or at lest no later than September. I always have a number of things I want to do and it all takes time. If I want any chance of getting most of it done I need to start early. 

Yep. That didn't work for me this year. I had no Christmas motivation in August and other things to deal with. So, I'm not getting many things done and I'm just starting to look at the Christmas projects. 

But in October I did get one thing done that has been on my to do list for a long time. Remember those color swatches I did earlier this year to pick out colors from my Naif dish pattern?  Well I finally got around to pulling some fabrics from my stash in those colors in order to make a quilt runner to fit on top of my dinning room server. 

I decided to use a simple brick pattern for the runner. You don't generally see much of a tabletop quilt in my house because there is usually so much stuff sitting on top of it.  So I didn't want or need to make some elaborate design for something that would end up mostly covered up. 

I did carefully plan the brick pattern and determined the sizes I needed to cut all the pieces to make it work. Odd thing though when I cut all the pieces, somehow I incorrectly measured and cut them all 1" longer than I planned. Not just a couple of them but ALL of them.  The 4" long blocks all came out 5" and the 3 1/2" blocks all came out 4 1/2".  At least they were all the correct width. I didn't even notice the mistake until I started sewing them together and it wasn't coming out as planned. That's never happened to me before.  I'm blaming the mistake on cutting the fabric while dealing with a migraine and watching videos on my iPad all at the same time. Too much multitasking. But that's OK, it didn't change the plan and I was not going to cut them again and wast all those spare inches. 

This is how it ended up pieced. 

This is the completed runner. 

I chose a light grey binding and quilted in simple parallel lines. 

It looked huge hanging on the design wall but I doubled check all the measurements this time and adjusted the finished size to account for shrinkage after washing.  And it fits perfectly. 

After finishing this quilt runner I finally got around to digging into my stored and set aside projects to figure out what I left unfinished last Christmas and what I'd planned to do but didn't get to. 

I found a couple of unfinished folded fabric star ornaments I was making so that was the first thing I got out of the way. These are usually made with paper and sometimes called German, Moravian, 3D or Danish paper stars.  I figured out a way I like to make them with fabric. It's not a very difficult or time consuming project so there is the immediate satisfaction of getting something done and the added benefit of jump starting my Christmas crafting motivation.

These folded stars are made from cut strips of batik fabric and have been sealed with clear acrylic gloss medium. I used copper wire and glass beads to create hangers for each star. The star on the right has some gold metallic powder mixed in with the gloss medium used to seal the star.

I really liked how these came out so I am planning on jumping in and making a few more right away.  Then I'll dive into my pile of Christmas print fabric and decide which surface in my house needs a new Christmas print quilt top for the holidays. 

Thanks for reading. 

Aileen