Break out the Christmas Décor

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving Holiday!  I definitely had a lot of fun traveling back home to Dallas to visit my parents and have a mini family reunion for the holiday.  Airports don't seem to understand that it's perfectly normal to travel with a sewing machine and a carry-on full of fabric… at least it is for quilter.  But I got everything there and back home without too much fuss.

So this Christmas stocking that I made with cathedral window was fairly epic.  I used the technique on the Missouri Star Quilt Co. website, however I did not use the 5 inch charm squares.  I thought for a stocking, the fabric variety should be smaller.  I used 2 1/2" squares for the stockings.  Half way through making the stocking, I realized I that I could provide a cheat sheet for those that want to make something similar.

Cathedral Window Stocking
Materials:
1 Fat Quarter for the lining
1 Fat Eighth for the cuff and loop
3 mini charm packs or 1 charm pack of Christmas Print
3 mini charm packs or 1 charm pack of white fabric (I used Bella Solids White)

If you are not using mini charm packs, cut the charms into 2 1/2" squares.  There are 106 print squares needed and 112 white squares needed.  Iron all of the white squares' opposite corners together to form a triangle.

Now you will need to layout the printed fabric as shown in the photo below.  This is really to cover the part that is going to be cut for the stocking size.  Make sure that you make one that has a MIRRORED layout to get both sides of the stocking.  The layout must be mirrored or else your stocking will have 2 of the same side!

I decided that I wanted to glue baste the white triangles, so they did not move while being sewn together. I ended up not glue basting the squares together, just the triangles to the squares.  I did attempt to glue baste the pieces completely together, but it caused too much bulk.  If you have never glue basted, you can use Elmer's washable glue with a micro fine tip or something similar to help get a small line of glue.  Then you use your iron to heat set the pieces together.  If you made a mistake, no worries just pull the fabric apart and re-glue.  I used a walking foot to piece the squares together due to the bulk of fabric.

Once the pieces are sewn together, pick prints to go in the windows of the stocking.  When making a cathedral window with 5 inch squares, you don't need to cut the pieces down.  However, we are using the mini charm size, and the pieces will be too big for the window.  The mini charms for the windows only will need to be trimmed to 2 1/4" square to fit.  Once you trim them down, you can lay it out to show how the stocking will look.  I glue basted the white edges down on the print square so it would be easier to sew together.

Once they are all glue basted, I used my walking foot to sew on the white edges to secure all the fabric in place.

I used Sew Like My Mom's free stocking pattern as my template to trace on the cathedral window fabric for my stocking outline.  I sewed on the line around the stocking so when I cut the stocking out, the fabric would not unravel in some places.  You can use her tutorial for how to assemble the rest of the stocking together here.

I love how this stocking turned out!  It was so much fun to make, and it looks so good.

I also found this really neat No-Sew "Quilted" Christmas Ornament YouTube video by Shabby Fabric that I can't wait to make.  I ordered some fabric and got supplies to make the ornaments later this month.  It looks like a great project for some scraps left over from a Christmas quilt.

I think this upcoming year I'll have more time to plan quilt gifts for friends and family.  I don’t really have any quilt Christmas gifts planned this year so sorry to everyone that was hoping to get one!

11/29-12/6 Weekly Goal:
Available time for quilting:
Wednesday and Friday Night, and Saturday and Sunday afternoon

Projects I want to work on:
Powered by Quilting Patterns
Steampunk
Treehouse Quilt

Goals for the Projects:
Powered by Quilting Patterns:  Cut fabric for Pattern #102, start sewing
Steampunk:  Complete 10 Blocks
Treehouse Quilt: Machine quilt and bind.