{amylouwho} sew & tell v3.12 - a Christmas quilt

*****There were some issues with the pictures! I think it's fixed now!*****

Happy Friday!

I'm really excited to have Rene' guest post sew & tell today!

She has been linking up to sew & tell since nearly the beginning!  She's always been so supportive, participating regularly and visiting/commenting everywhere and really catching the spirit of the linky party!

I'm going to let her take it from here!

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Hello and welcome to Sew and Tell Friday!  Rene' from Rene' Creates here, and I am so thrilled to be hosting this week's link party.  Thank you Amy for welcoming me as a guest blogger!  To commemorate my first guest blog post ever, I chose to make my first ever Christmas quilt!

I followed Malka's supersize shoofly quilt pattern which has precise cutting and sewing instructions.  This quilt came together much quicker than the No Worries shoofly quilt I recently made.  The four Christmas prints used are Michael Miller Tree Trimmers, Michael Miller Folk Art Trees, Robert Kaufman O' Tinsel Tree and Robert Kaufman Groove.  The neutral fabric used for the background is from a bolt of Moda I had in my stash.  

As you can see there are various quilting designs going on here.  I am determined to if not master, at least improve, my FMQ skills!  My plan was to quilt each quadrant densely yet differently.  However, when it came time to quilt, my machine had other ideas.

First, I stippled the center diamond area which worked fine.  

Feeling confident, I tried my hand at pebble quilting the Groove (dots fabric) quadrant.  That's when my machine rebelled.  Towards the end, my "pebbles" were getting larger and larger with more and more space in between just to finish and be done with it ;-)

I switched back to my walking foot and used that to quilt a spiral in the Tree Trimmers (peppermint fabric) section.  Let me tell you it was very difficult maneuvering (basically swirling) this size quilt on my machine.  I was very glad to finish the spiral.

For the O' Tinsel Tree (pink fabric) area, I again used my walking foot and echo quilted around the center of the block.  This looked boring so I randomly quilted lines and blocks in the center square.  

Getting tired of using my walking foot, I switched back to FMQing and quilted loops for the Folk Art Trees (green fabric).

Since I stippled the center diamond, I also chose to stipple the triangular neutral areas on the top and bottom, whereas a walking foot was used to quilt organic lines in the four neutral corners.

I chose to use two different neutrals for the backing because I wanted to keep it simple and highlight the quilting.  I did have a hard time photographing that neutral background though.  For the binding, I went with the Robert Kaufman Groove dot fabric and Amanda Jean's machine binding tutorial.

Well, thanks again Amy for letting visit and share my Christmas quilt with you and your readers!

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Such a fun quilt!  Thanks Rene'!  You've inspired me to get the lap quilt finished I want to make!

Now, join in the fun and show us what you accomplished this week!

Linky Rules.  Please follow along for a fun party!

1. Please write the post for sew & tell - or add a blurb mentioning sew & tell to a post written since the last sew & tell.  If you are linking to a post with your own tutorial, please make sure it was a finish from this week and that the completed project is shown first.

2. One linky per person. (please put multiple projects in one post.)

3. Link to your specific post.  (See here for permalink instructions - or email me.)

4. Link back here with a link or a button (HTML on my sidebar).

5. Be sure to visit and leave comments on other's posts!

Please put your (blog)name instead of your project name, it helps us get to know each other better!