Christmas Gifts

I made three people gifts for Christmas.  The first was a lap quilt for my daughter.  I'd bought a pack of Riley Blake's Seaside charm squares and wanted to make something that would use all of them, but being inexperienced I didn't realise that 25 squares don't go very far, so had to order some matching yardage to go with it.  I copied the Sandcastle Quilt from the Fat Quarter Shop which is a version of the Peyton at Play quilt, but I used my own measurements and worked out exactly how much I'd need.  Quite a lot of calculations involved but I had just enough with little to spare.

I took out the 3 squares that had children building sandcastles on them as I didn't think they went so well and replaced them with a bit of the border fabric.  The batting is Hobbs 80/20 cotton and the backing is plain cream cotton sheeting.  I quilted it on my machine using echo quilting around the central patches and straight lines about 3/8" apart around the border..  The double binding was stitched to the back by hand.  I finshed it off with a machined label.  The finished quilt measures 48" square.

The second gift was for a friend who had very kindly given me some cotton scraps to help build my scrap stash.  I made this table mat using a tutorial from the Moda Bake Shop.

I quilted it by machine following the zig-zag pattern.

My final gift was a pair of bags for another friend.  This is the smaller bag but I don't seem to have taken a photo of the larger bag that went with it.  It is the same design only bigger.  The fabric came from Ikea and they are lined with the burnt orange cotton fabric, also from Ikea.  I used a very good tutorial from bijoulovelydesigns.com.

I haven't done any sewing since Christmas, but I just can't wait to get started again once all the Xmas stuff is put away tomorrow.