Each year I do at least a few Christmas sewing projects. This year for teacher gifts at Jason's school I did 2 different designs, a wreath and a Bethlehem star using a lot of the same blues from last Christmas' lap quilts. This year I made the star as a medallion alone and presented it as a wall hanging instead of a full quilt. I didn't bore you with photos this time as the fabrics were mostly the same as last year's star(s) and what I was most excited about this year was the wreath design.
I had been wanting to do this patern for a long time, but I will admit, I hate cutting and sewing triangles. If there is any way to turn a traditional triangle assembly method into a strip piecing project within a quilt pattern, I'll go that way every time. As a quilter, of course, triangles can't be totally avoided.. how many log cabin quilts can a person sew before they loose it all together?
So, for this project I chose to find a way to strip piece the pieced triangles. Now, I'll admit, this way is somewhat wasteful on the fabric as you do cut away a bit of scraps. I also realize that I could cut and sew only on the triangle sides that are not bias cuts. However, there are two things that I feel you avoid with this method; first, the stretching of the triangle when the fabtic is cut on the bias [a cut 45 degrees cross grain] and the tiny points of the triangle getting sucked into the needle well of the machine, which is very frustrating and makes for a messy point on your triangle.
Getting started with this one, as any was picking fabrics and plotting my plan in my notebook.
This design is not mine, I took the wreath from another patern and adjusted it by omitting parts of the patern and adding a boarder.
Since I strip pieced this one I had selected fabrics and mapped out each pieced 4 triangle block and then cut stips for piecing
Once I had the two fabrics for each side of the pieced block I then created 4 patch squares and cut the points to orient them into 4 patch triangles vs. 4 patch squares. Thsi did feel like I was cheating, but the resulting blocks have centers with points that match perfectly and no distorted corners.
I continued this technique for all of the pieced squares.
The only thing to do from here on was the finishing. Layed out my components, double checked my placement of the pieces and built a wreath.
The photo of the finished wreath may not show it well, but I used the meander method of quilting in the field of the wreath itself and then simply 'stitch in the ditch' quilted the boarder and binding.
This was a really simple project that, I think, has a really complex look. I think that Jason's teachers really appreciated the gift and will hang it in their homes each Christmas...
Now to treat myself to one for my own Christmas decorations ... Merry Christmas!
