Christmas Reds

Our little quilt group meets once a month for a mini-quilting retreat. We eat good food, work on all sorts of projects, and catch up on the scuttlebutt around town. This weekend, I worked on some lap quilts that will be finding good homes this Christmas.

All those reds I washed and washed are getting put to good use. I am making two lap quilts simultaneously, both using these same reds in 12" Ohio stars, but each with a different border. You can see now, with the miles and miles of white, why I was so concerned about potential bleeding. Even after three washes, I'm still a little nervous. I had picked out two different white-on-white prints, one for each quilt, but somewhere along the line, I made a mistake hunting and gathering and didn't have enough of the snowflake print I started using for this quilt. I had a stack of FQ's, and I think I counted them as half yards. At any rate, after I had eleven of the twelve stars made, I had to substitute in a different white snowflake print, which was a thinner fabric. I hate how it looks right now as a flimsy, but I'm hoping once it's all backed with a snow white batt, the situation will resolve itself. You can really see the difference in fabrics in the sashing. 

The snowman border print is an older Benartex piece I've hoarded in my stash for years. It came in both blue and green colorways, and I love that they aren't cartoony. They're just little old fogey snowmen, wrapped up in kicky red scarves, happy as can be. It's the perfect fabric for a grown-up holiday throw. 

Here's a peek at what others were working on this weekend...

Have you ever seen so many Harley Davidson T-shirts?

Comments

[Liz A.]

If you are concerned about bleeding, gift the quilts with a box of color catchers and instructions for washing separately with the color catchers. I always do that for quilts with batiks or other questionable fabrics, especially reds.

[Erin (your Skagway friend)]

Looks like fun, who did the flag quilt it is awesome! I can't tell the difference in your sashing and what are you always telling me..."it's homemade, its not supposed to be perfect."