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
