Happy Holidays!

A couple of years ago, I made this Christmas quilt. I was going to use it for a pillow, but my husband said that it was "too pretty to be something that the kids are going to throw around," so I made it a wall hanging instead. It's machine pieced and hand quilted. To see them close up, just click on the pictures.

"Log Cabin Star"

21" x 21"

I've entered this in SewCalGal's Virtual Christmas Quilt Show - a fun way to display quilts without the trouble of actually leaving my chair. You can link here to see other quilts in the show.

And for the other half of my family, I made this Channukah quilt from something I saw in a magazine of miniature quilts several years ago. Machine pieced, appliqued and quilted with commercially printed fabrics and batiks and some of my own hand-dyes. I used heat-set fabric crayons for the colored smoke.

"Channukah Lights"

16" x 19"

I made a couple more of these Channukah quilts for gifts and used Pentel Arts Fabric Fun Pastel Dye Sticks for the colorful smoke and got much more vibrant colors. I would use those instead of the crayons if I were to do this again. They're soft and color the fabric easily; after heat-setting, they're permanent. Best of all -- they don't change the hand of the fabric at all.