Prairie Schooler Santas

I've been doing a bit of cross stitch over the summer holidays. I've now completed 5 Prairie Schooler Santas.  The company releases a new Santa pattern every year and I bought about 30 of them when I decided to join this craze.  I keep them all in one project bag so it's easy to pick another one when I finish one. 

2021 Santa

1996 Santa

2003 Santa

2005 Santa

1984 Santa

I haven't turned them into FFO's yet (Finally Finished Objects) because I want to stitch more of them first and then finish them all in a similar manner - probably mini pillows but I'm not totally sure yet. 

I do like having something small and relatively easy to stitch.  The design all use a limited palette of colours so I keep a good supply of cottons and my chosen linen in the my project bag too.  

2024 - My quilting year in review

It's the end of the year and time to look back at what I made in 2024. 

The first few months on the year were spent finishing my Kokomo quilt (Stars Upon Stars).  Our guild's exhibition in May was the motivation I needed to get going and finish it.  I started it at the beginning of 2020, so it deserved to be finished, but going from a bunch of blocks to a finished hand pieced and hand quilted quilt in just five months took a lot of dedication.  

During that time I also hand quilted Last Christmas:

And managed to finish up Faith:

And Purple Zone:

After our exhibition I took a break for a while but made some baby quilts for my niece's new baby and toddler, and then went to Quilt Symposium in Cambridge, NZ. 

After Symposium I had another burst of creativity and made:

Houdini

Crazy

and the non retirement quilt

So once again I've had a productive year.  I'm lucky that I have a part time job with flexible hours so I have plenty of time for quilting.  

Of course I have lots of quilting plans for 2025 already. First up there's all those things that didn't get finished in 2024, but there's also a brand new Kaffe quilting already cut out and just waiting for me to get back from holiday.  

Thank you to everyone who reads my posts, and to all the people who leave comments. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all. 

The non retirement quilt

I'm squeezing in one more finish before the end of the year and then my next blog post will be my annual wrap up. 

This quilt was designed and made for friend and work colleague. We gave it to her this week and she was thrilled.  

It possibly looks a bit washed out in these photos but it's bright!!

It's all 6" finished half square triangles but the placement works so well with these strong colours.  

I had this one long arm quilted at Busy Bee Quilt shop in Wellington.  The backing is a Kaffe Fassett wideback.  

I showed it at Capital Quilters guild meeting with my own purple/green version from quite a few years ago.  

The finished size is 60" x 60".

Crazy

And I have another finish to share with you.  I'm calling this one "Crazy" because it sends your eyes a bit crazy as you try to pick out the pattern.  However, I chose a very clever motif for the long arm quilting and that may help you to see the blocks.  (Garden Trellis 4 by House of Creations)

I purchased this Kaffe Fassett Marquee Stripe fabric at one of our guild sales days and I didn't have a lot to play with. this is all of the blocks I could make from what I had.  And it's long out of print now.

I couldn't find a fabric in my stash to complement the top, so the next best option is to go opposites so I went for beautiful Cactus Flower - also by Kaffe Fassett Collective. 

I showed the early stages of this quilt back in July, and I had actually forgotten about it until I stumbled across it a few weeks ago.   Fortunately I still had enough of the teal stars to do the binding in the same fabric.  I'm very happy with that decision, although I did consider a black stripe for a while. 

The Shiraz stripe in the border triangles is from Kaffe Fassett Collective too. 

My Crazy quilt is 50" x 60" so it could be used as a lap quilt of on a single bed. 

Tekapo - Capturing Memories

I'm on a roll with finishes at the moment.

I asked my long arm quilter to do some very simple quilting on my Symposium piece while she was quilting a couple of other quilts for me recently.  

Then I added some facings because the quilt is only 27" x 27" and I didn't want  binding that could appear bulky on such a small piece.  

I love the backing because it looks like deep blue water.  

I've called my quilt "Tekapo" because as soon as I saw the design I thought of Lake Tekapo in the South Island of New Zealand.  I've stayed there twice and I love the special colour of that lake.  I made sure that my lake was the colour I remember and I changed my background from grey to blue as well.    

    

So now I have a finished quilt and very fond memories of a great class with Veruschka Zarate - Pride and Joy Quilting.  If you ever get a chance to take a class with Veruschka then I recommend that you grab it.  She is such a a lovely person and she shared so much of her quilting knowledge with us.  

You can read my earlier post about the class I took at Symposium here. 

Her "Dignity" quilt has been juried in to QuiltCon in February 2025 so I'm sure you're going to hear a lot more about Veruschka then.  You can see it here https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1A27Nc8UHP/

Houdini

I've called my Lollie Wheels quilt "Houdini" because it's magic.  There's an optical illusion that make you think that there's a square in the middle of each pinwheel block.  But it's all due to fussy cutting! The fabric has printed lines of stitching on it, and if you cut it right way you can make this effect. 

I made my quilt from some pieces of Lollies, Looking Forward and Remix that I had in my stash - along with contributions from 4 other sources.  Jen Kingwell has a whole new range of Lollies fabrics coming out right now and the Lollie Wheels pattern was released at Quilt Market to go with the new fabrics.  The pattern is available as a free download from the Amitie Textiles website. 

You can read more about the cutting process on my earlier blog post here. 

I asked my long arm quilter to keep the quilting simple and just do straight vertical lines with pink thread.  I'm really pleased with it.  I think it allows the viewer to focus on the blocks without getting distracted by the quilting.  

If I have left over fabrics I like to put them on the back because then I can show people how I did the fussy cutting. 

My quilt ended up bigger than I initially planned because I was able to source more fabric than I expected.  But I love the variety of fabrics in it.  There certainly won't be another one identical to this!

My finished quilt is 64" x 72".

Kokomo (Stars Upon Stars) Hand Quilting

And now to Part D of my posts on Kokomo (Stars Upon Stars)

D. Hand Quilting

I always knew that I would hand quilt my Kokomo. I wanted to say that it was entirely made by me. 

However, with so many tiny pieces in this quilt there are a lot of seam allowances to quilt through. 

I used Aurifil 24wt because it's fine and strong and perfect for hand quilting.  I didn't want the quilting to stand out, so I used colours that blended into the fabrics.   

You can read more about how I hand quilt on this page on my blog, but I always use a hoop and I always choose wool batting because it's the easiest to quilt through and gives a lovely soft result. 

I quilted three lines across the diamonds in the central stars which you can see on the photo below.  One at row 3, one at row 5, and one at row 7.  I needed to do some quilting withing the diamonds and this worked best for me.  

I tried multiple methods of quilting the sashing strips in straight lines, but all of them looked like I was rushing it and just wanted it finished, so I bit the bullet and quilted the sashing strips in the ditch.  And I'm very pleased that I did.  I like the finished look. 

I really enjoyed hand quilting Kokomo and revisiting all of my fabric choices.