After I finished my 2nd quilt in December 2011 I purchased Elizabeth Hartman's bookPractical Guide to Patchwork which is a fantastic book for beginner's. I was dying to make another quilt, and decided to make the quilt Snapshots from the book. This was before I knew about online fabric shops, so I purchased all my fabrics at Joann's. The quilt is pieced using a strip method, and 12 x 12 blocks. I basted the quilt and put it in a bin for months and months and months. I was planning to give it to my Mom for a Christmas gift so you know how that goes, I thought hmm its only March I have plenty of time. In October it was my Mom's birthday and I decided to make her a pillow to match the quilt she would someday get. Remember this one?

Well just as usual I waited until 2 weeks before Christmas to pull it out. My basting job was terrible, so I had to re-baste it and start over. It is pretty awesome to see how much my piecing has improved it was so out of line. I decided to quilt it with a leaf vine pattern. My leaves are very very organic, because no two are a like ;) To finish the quilt I decided to try out my new Janome 4120QDC, yes I haven't shared about that yet, but at Christmas I became a mother of a Janome. Yes, I still love my Juki more…I will share a proper post later. I used the zigzag stitch on the Janome for the binding and it was complete!

Memory Pillow

The next present I wanted to share was a memory pillow I made for my dad. I printed the picture on June Tailer Colorfast Sew-In Fabric Sheets, and it is definitely color fast it worked very well. It only works with Ink-jet printers though. I then added the two borders. My Dad's house is Sante Fe and Native American style, so I had to go against my tendencies which are usually to use blacks, greys, and white and I had to use a brown and gold Kona Cotton. For the quilting I just went with it I wanted the dark brown to look like wood grain so I used a wood grain pattern. Then for the gold border I just went crazy!  I used 40wt Aurifil 2385 threadto contrast with the border colors and I love it!

Children's Bible Cover

The last Christmas present I wanted to share is a Children's Bible Cover I made. For this I didn't really use a tutorial or pattern I just sort of winged it. I LOVE how it turned out, I actually made two identical ones, one for my nephew Karson and nephew William.

2012 In Review

Here is a slideshow showing everything I made this year, it really feels good to see how much I got done, learned and have grown. What a wonderful adventure!

Created with flickr slideshow.

Have a very Happy New Year! Can't wait for whats in store 2013!

Alyssa