Ho Ho HO!

Today is my turn to share in the Ho, Ho, Ho - Christmas in July hosted by Madam Sam at Sew We Quilt and our cheerleader Carol from Just Let me Quilt!  A HUGE thank you to both! There have been some fabulous projects all week long, and more to come! Please stop by today's posters to get in the holiday spirit and see what they've created!

August 8

Quiltscapes

Marla’s Crafts

A Stitch In Time

Mehitabel’s Musings

Buzzing and Bumbling

Transitions For Meee

A Little Bit of Lorene

I Piece 2-Mary

Under the Presser Foot (that's me)

A Reformed Heath’n

Just Sew Quilter

As far as far as summers go - this one has pretty much been a whirlwind!  So, I really enjoyed this little project to just break from the little rat race we've got going on :)

For me, Christmas is a time of FAVORITES! So, I started with my FAVORITE block - the New York Beauty.  I wanted a table topper.  So to jump right in and get to work, I popped in a dvd - my favorite Christmas movie - of all time. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation!

I mean really - locked in the attic with the home movies & Chevy Chase running up the stairs with that squirrel on his back! Forget it!!







For foundation paper, my favorite is the Crayola Doodle Pad.

It's newsprint, and it rips SUPER EASY!  /The fact that it's only a couple bucks at Walmart is super cool too!




So, I trim it up for the printer like so . . .









I found a couple of New York Beauty patterns online - but they were all 6" or 8".  I don't know if that's because it prints out better on 8 1/2 x 11 paper - or why really, but what I wanted a 12" block, and I've never really been a "fit on the paper" kind of gal anyway, soooo . . . I hop on over to my next favorite - my most favorite Christmas present (thank you hubby) - love, love, love my EQ7!

 

I drafted up a couple options and played around with some color - wham bam! I got my 12" block :)



Once my pieces were printed, I notched the areas where the lines were to meet, use a little dab of the glue stick, and there it is.

Around here - for us - Christmas isn't so much red and green, but more like LOTS of color

 and and festiveness.  So I just grabbed some of everything and jumped right in!

Zip zip and here we go . . .

About here is where I put on my favorite Christmas music while I sew :)

Once I have one together, just to check it out - I throw some rocks and silk flowers in a glass, light some tea lights to get a "feel" if this is going the direction I want . . .

 Yeah, I'm diggin' it :)

Now, I don't know if you tell looking at this block - but once my blocks were together, I sliced a little extra down - this doesn't exactly make them wonky,

 but it's kind of like turning the end of a kaleidoscope - skews my angles a little when they meet up. This gives a slight star-like effect.

I need to put a back on it and quilt it - I was thinking maybe another design so it could be reversible - maybe a tree or snowman, or something.  On the other hand I really liked the idea of doing some free motion pebbles around the outer gray area - which may not exactly translate with what's going on the back - will have to ponder this some more.  What do you think - what would you do?

Thanks for stopping by!