A few weeks back, I traveled to my home town in Iowa to attend an annual fundraiser for my old high school. I get to spend 2 full days of quilting with talented quilters from my hometown. It is always fun and I love going! We usually offer a quick and easy project as a demo, including a few technique tips. This year, the goal was to create a holiday project, and tackling the subject of perfect points, mitered corners, machine quilting and bindings. Soooo. . .
We showcased this holiday table topper. It was super easy and fun to make. I thought I would share it with you – just in case you needed to pull a quick holiday project out of your stash in the next few weeks.
I started with a great tutorial by Sewn Up/Teresa Down Under for a Disappearing Pinwheel Block. You can see the post and video here: Disappearing Pinwheel by Sewn Up, along with her beautiful sampler quilt and 11 variations created with simple little block!
I found some seriously-cute holiday fabric, referred to the video for the cutting instructions and made my first pinwheel.
Now the magic happens – cut the pinwheel block into 9 equal sections, creating 9 smaller blocks.
Repeat with the other three blocks.
Switch, flip and rotate a few small blocks and watch those large pinwheels disappear!
Awesome, right? Let’s try another layout. . .
Since I am partial to the Churn Dash Block, this was the layout I chose. Each block measured 11″ unfinished.
I added a 5 1/2″ border with mitered corners to frame it out. In one short afternoon, I created a 30″ table topper for the holidays. Wow!
This would be a great project for a table runner, placemats or an entire quilt. Here is one of the projects that was made at Quiltfest by a student. Same fabric line, but played with a little differently. I love the contrasts!
Here’s a look at some of the other wonderful projects that were worked on over the weekend. So many great quilts!
For our Bay Area readers – The new Bay Quilts quilt shop in Richmond, is having a meet the teachers event on Saturday, December 3 from 1-3. If you haven’t checked out this beautiful new shop, this is a great opportunity. Darci Read and I will be there chatting about the classes we are scheduled to teach in 2017. Stop by and say hello! There is also a wonderful 12 x 12 gallery show that will be on display at the shop. Be sure to check out The Power of 12 quilt show, that will be up through the end of the year.
And now – the Giveaway winner from last week’s post goes to Nance of idreamofquilting.com. Nance shared a simple, but really great tip:
“I always spray the top of the fabric and then flip it over and iron from the back. That way I don’t get any starch flakes on the top of the fabrics.”
There were lots of other great tips on ironing, so if you missed that post, take a moment and scroll through the comment sections. Thanks everyone!
