Sunday, December 8, 2013

On the Worktable: Christmas Stars

Hi everyone! I hope you are having a good weekend. Yesterday, I dropped everything to start a new quilt for Christmas. Last year I came up with the design and bought all the fabric for the top, but I ran out of time. Once Christmas was over, I didn't feel like working on it anymore. You know how it goes. This year I'm not in a panic to finish it in time for Christmas. I just wanted something crafty and festive to work on in the evenings.


Christmas Stars
EQ Mockup

The design is loosely based on my Stargazer pattern. I inverted the stars, added a border and chose a fun, unconventional Christmas color for my background. The dimensions of the stars are exactly the same as the pattern. I will show you later in the week how to make a Stargazer quilt using layer cakes and charm packs.

Christmas Stars
Cherry Christmas by Aneela Hoey for Moda

The fabric is a layer cake of Cherry Christmas by Aneela Hoey. I absolutely love this collection! Aneela's illustrations are so charming and her colors are fresh and festive. The solids are Jade and Red by FreeSpirit. Teal again? I know some of you are shaking your heads. While it is one of my favorite colors, it's also perfect for this project. I needed something that would contrast with each print - including my favorites with a white background. Taking clues from the colors in fabric, I looked at deeper shades of grey, red, green and aqua.



Background-Options

I liked the charcoal a lot, but I decided against it because that much dark grey would make the quilt feel dark and heavy.


The claret and moss are lovely and would give the quilt a pretty snow lodge, woodsy Christmas feel. We get sun instead of snow in the winter where I live. Once the leaves fall off the trees the quality of the light outside is cool and bright. In other words, I don't feel very woodsy at Christmastime, I feel bright and sunny.


Which brings me back to teal. I tried shades darker and lighter than the aqua background from fabric. Both teal and mist looked awesome and it was just a matter of choosing one. FreeSpirit's Jade is bright, happy, and wintery all at once. It makes the aqua, grey, green, red and white all shine. 


Christmas Stars

It's kind of perfect.


UPDATE: Here is the cutting guide for making these blocks with layer cakes and charm packs. 


Follow via: Bloglovin' | Feedly | Facebook

6 comments:

  1. I love this fabric line and hope I can get some before it all completely disappears! I think the teal is great too :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice!!! love that Christmas fabric line, one of the best!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Beautiful! I like the teal for how unconventionally Christmassy it is - actually I think that's part of my love for Cherry Christmas too! Can't wait to see more of this quilt :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Love the design. I think the teal is great for the background.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yes, the teal is perfect! I can't wait to see it sewed up, it will be gorgeous!

    ReplyDelete
  6. just wondering if you told us how to use layers and charm packs !!! or am i not looking in the right place thanks !!

    ReplyDelete

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...