12/16/09

Quilted Christmas Wreath

Good Wednesday! Wow, can the holiday really be this close? And, even though I've finished my shopping and finished my wrapping, I'm still feeling stressed about it. I'm not taking as much time off this year as I normally do because there's just so much to do around here. Not to say that I won't be home, because I'll be working from home. Sydney gets out of school this friday and is out for over two weeks. That's going to make it double tough to concentrate because my sewing machines will be sitting right there, calling out to me "It's okay to take time away from work, you work hard all year, take some relaxation time, you can sew for 15 minutes and then get back to work"...RIGHT!!! Even I don't believe that one.

This is a little wreath I made a few of two years ago. It's from Martha Thompson's Magical Hexagons book. I gave all of them away as gifts except this one. It was a test. If you click the picture and expand it, you'll see all this crazy, busy quilting all over it. I was checking whether I wanted to do that on all of them.



It's actually an outline of the backing fabric. I flipped it over and quilted around the red flowers, the white flowers and the green leaves in matching color thread. It gave me a kind of crazy scene on the front.


Needless to say, I did NOT do that on all of them. At first I didn't like how the quilting overwhelmed the pieced wreath. But this year, when we pulled it out, I decided I did like the effect of the flowers quilted on the front. But, the biggest reason is that it took forEVER and I didn't have the time to do it on 5 wreaths.

I can't remember if this is an exact pattern in the book or just made with that method. The method is to cut out hexagons and sew them all together, then cut the resulting top into triangles and sew them together. You end up with a hexagon shape again and all those gear shapes spinning across the top. Add a border and you have a quilt. It's a pattern I'd definitely make again and might try to use for something bigger in the future.

Have a great day. Two more days until the weekend. Lane

3 comments:

My name is Riet said...

That is a beautiful hexagon Lane. LOve the colours and the quilting.

Becky said...

Very pretty! Try not to stress...take a deep breath. :)

Shirley said...

That's so pretty Lane. When I have to work from home I do it in chunks and do stuff in between. As long as the work gets done it doesn't matter when like it does when you're stuck in an office. It's so hard not to stress but I think as far as Christmas goes I'm making it this year. I just keep reminding myself it's only a day like the other 364 days of the year.