Author: Lyn_Brown

In addition to quilts on our trip to the Central Coast of California, we saw some other interesting textile items. I loved this Santa Star pillow. Looks very cute and pretty simple.

The star is made from a cutter quilt (as much as I dislike that concept!) but think about some of your orphan blocks, prequilted fabrics or Christmas fabrics that could be quilted up quickly and simply. The star is about 11″ (Draw 1/2 a star to fill about 5 1/2″ X 11″ of a sheet of paper to use as a pattern.) This star isn’t turned but all raw edge and I suppose it wouldn’t even need to be quilted. Just stitched and stuffed.
Santa is made flat with a double 1/2″ fringe of bangs (from a 1″ X 6″piece of muslin, note that cute curve that stitches it down) and a long 1/4″ fringe (6″ wide and 5″ long) for a beard. Stitch it as one big smiley curve from the middle of one side of the star center to the middle of opposite side.
The eyes are inked or French knots with glasses from wire or the craft store. And the mustache is just a 1/2″ X 5″ strip knotted once and tacked in place.
Once you have Santa made add a backing and stuff your pillow. Wow! Simple and so cute!

This sweet stitchery is an ode to the Rag Doll. After patterning our Twiggy Rag Doll, I thought I needed to post this little framed item.

But the best idea I saw on this trip was this Christmas garland. The gal at the store said she made it by cutting up a whole cloth quilt (Sob!) but I thought this would be a great use for our practice quilt sandwiches!

You know, those 18″ squares of muslin sandwiched with quilt batt used to practice our machine quilting? I’ve always looked for some use for them once they are filled (not that I’ve ever completely finished one!)
What you would do is slice the quilted sandwich into 1 1/2″ X 9″ slices, take a few hand stitches to form a slice into a circle, overlapping about 1/2″ (or glue the slice into a circle with a glue gun.) Loop another slice into that first one and repeat. One quilt sandwich should yield 24 slices which will give you about a 60″ garland. Pretty fun!
P.S. Who says the quilt sandwich has to be muslin? What a great way to use up old Christmas fabrics and increase your quilting skills all through the year!

Hang your garland on your tree, across the mantle or (Gulp! Smile!) in your sewing room!
Now, as always, I suggest you look around this site for LOTS of other dynamite gift ideas and other free patterns.

Including:
The Quilters Alphabet Quilt Archive

Past swap/scrap-quilts

Rainbow Triangles Quilt – 8 Triangles at a Time!

2012 Rainbow Swaps

Burgoyne Surrounded Supply List

Iris 2012 Pattern

Iris 2012 Supply List

Doll Quilt Series (Did you see our latest – Modern Rails?)

Free Quilting Classes (Orange County, CA) Times and Locations (We start up again January 7)

New Student Supply List

My Etsy site With Even More Patterns!

As always, we have a lot going on here at LynBrown.com! Thanks for looking in on us!
Make A Great Quilt!