Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Christmas Wishes from The Whimsical Workshop


Christmas Wishes featuring Basics from P&B Textiles
66” x 66”
Designed by Heidi Pridemore


To me, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. I love this time of year with the beautiful lights, gathering together with family & friends and the wonderful cool weather we experience here in the Phoenix! It one of the few times in the year that we really need quilts to stay warm, so the timing is always perfect to break out my Christmas quilts. This month I designed a lovely Christmas Throw named “Christmas Wishes”. Now you may be thinking, it is a week before Christmas, how could I complete this quilt in time?  Well the beauty of Christmas is that is comes every year. So now is the time to start planning for next year.  This pattern would also work well in any color family, so you can make one for each season.

The Christmas Wishes quilt is perfect for cuddling under with that someone special. It will also be great addition to my Christmas quilt collection as well as yours. Christmas Wishes has a vintage look but you can use bright holiday prints or modern Christmas fabric to make a quilt that fits your holiday décor or as a gift for a lucky person. We made this quilt using the AccuQuilt Go! Big Electric Fabric Cutter and basic fabric from P&B Textiles.


This month’s featured dies are the GO! LeMoyne Star-9” finished (55453) and GO! Equilateral 4 ½” sides triangle (55429). The pattern for Christmas Wishes is now available at our website for download here.  The pattern will have all instructions to make this lovely quilt.


The GO! LaMoyne Star die makes cutting blocks for this quilt a dream. But as you can see above there are ALOT of pieces to it. If that seems undaunting, this is a prefect project to do one block at a time. There are only nine blocks in the quilt, see it already sounds easier!

One thing to about this quilt is that all the pieces have bias edges. So be careful not to stretch or distort the pieces as you work. Here are some tips for working with bias edges. First, starch and press your fabric before cutting, this will add some stiffness to the fabric and makes it easier to work with. Second when pressing your pieces, do so lightly and do not starch while pressing your pieces this will also help keep down the distortion.

When making this quilt, always press toward the dark fabric. By doing this  the light and dark halves will nest together because the seams will mirror each other.


Each main block is made up from sixteen units. To make one unit you need to make two halves, one that uses a light diamond with dark triangles and one that uses a dark triangles and light triangles. This seem pretty straight forward but it is amazing how mixed up the pieces can get if you do not lay out your blocks before sewing. Trust me, I know what I am talking about J. The images above show how the light half goes together and the image below shows the dark half going together. They are mirror images of each other so carefully follow the images in the pattern as you go.


Once you have the two halves made, sew them together to make one unit as shown in the image below. Press towards the Dark Diamond unit. Now you just need to repeat to make all the units, easy peasy! Once all the units are together, follow our directions on assembling the blocks and then the quilt top.


For the outer border, I used the GO! Equilateral 4 ½” sides triangle to create the border design. This die is designed so well that it makes this task a piece of cake. I will definitely not shy away from triangle quilts with this die in my library. AccuQuilt designed the die to create mini triangles on two sides of the  main triangle. You can use these mini triangles to align the two triangles together so the go together in a snap. Also the die is designed with blunt ends on each point so you do not have to trim the “dog ears” from the triangles after they are pieced together that happens in traditional piecing.  



It is hard to believe this is our sixth free project we had done with Accuquilt and P&B Textiles and I have many other great ideas for future projects. I hope you have enjoyed following along with our Blog these past six months and as always I would love to see what you come up with.

Make sure to visit my blog each month where I will share with you some tips and tricks on cutting and assembling of the project of the month along with posting the free pattern on our website www.TheWhimsicalWorkshop.com You can also see our pattern and post at www.pbtex.com and www.accuquilt.com


Until next time…..
Heidi

Please visit us at www.TheWhimsicalWorkshop.com to see all of our patterns and fabrics.