Christmas Quilt Mania

Every year the "Creative Crafters" in my neighborhood made fleece blankets, scarves and quilts for local nursing homes and CASA.  They meet while I'm at work, but my adorable neighbor was telling me all about their project and I thought that it sounded like the perfect excuse to start learning how to quilt.  With the help of my mom, I was able to finish two quilts!  I cheated a bit for time and just sandwiched the quilted part with fleece and then top stitched.  I was pretty pumped with the way that they came out.  I also made a blanket using a piece of gingerbread panel material that I already had and a fleece blanket with some leftover fleece.

 I didn't start the whole project until December 1, so it was a pretty busy month!

This was my first quilt.  A pretty basic pin wheel.  Mom taught me how to cut one 12"x12" square in my first material and then another 12"x12" square in a coordinating fabric and sew them together, right sides together.  Then I took my rotary cutter and cut diagonally across my block twice.  Once I opened them up and ironed them, I had a square with two triangles (one in each fabric). I put four of those squares together (carefully) and I suddenly had a pinwheel.   MAGIC! 

I have to confess- I love this quilt.  The colors are beautiful and it was my first quilt... so I kept it...

Onto quilt # 2.  We figure that a lot of people would make more feminine quilts (like my pinwheel), so I wanted to make sure that one of mine would be appropriate for a man.  I chose the "square within a square" pattern and used plaid material and dark green material.  I backed it with blue fleece and then top stitched around the outside of the small plaid squares.  The finished product reminded me a lot of LL Bean.  Keeping the holiday spirit in mind, I was actually able to part with this one!

I've been on a mission to use up a lot of the material that I have.  So, for the last two, I dug into my bins and found a gingerbread panel and a chunk of children's fleece and quickly put the following 2 blankets together.

Lucy- My little Christmas helper sleeping on the job!