December: A Gift and a Bonus Tutorial

 The Free Motion Challenge teacher for December was Patsy Thompson who provided a wonderful lesson on quilting borders in text, pictures and video.  The lesson and challenge had several parts, and while I started the month with good intentions, I did not complete the challenge to my satisfaction.  I'm going to spend some time in January doing the December challenge.  Patsy is a wonderful teacher who has made lots of instructional DVDs that are now on my wish list.

 I did, however, bake hundreds of cookies, decorate the house and the tree, make some Christmas gifts and do all other things Christmas-y.

And I completed one of the Bonus Tutorials that SewCalGal added to the Free Motion Challenge.  The one I did was by Diane Loomis who taught us to do machine trapunto.  This is something I have always wanted to try, and the tutorial was very clear and easy to follow.  I am really pleased with the results and am certainly going to incorporate trapunto into some projects in the future.  Diane suggested we use silk thread for our sample.  The thread I used was a #50, so it is more obvious than the #100 she suggested.  I used off-white fabric on the top and a pale gold and white rose print on the back.  I followed her directions to the letter and marked the cross-hatching lines for the background.
I am really happy with the top.

I'm even happier with the back because the gold thread works so well on the fabric.  I have more of the backing fabric left and I'm going to try this again using it as the top.

Thank you, Diane Loomis! And thank you, SewCalGal!


One of the Christmas-y sewing projects was this little Christmas quilt I made for friends.  I machine quilted garlands on the trees with metallic thread and hearts on the hearts with red thread. 

I love how the red striped binding and the gifty backing.

We had a wonderful Christmas and hope you did too.