Bows and Boughs Wall Hanging

Bows and Boughs Wall Hanging



 In the 10 years that I have been quilting, I have never made a Christmas wall hanging!  I was so focused on making quilts, place mats and runners, that I had only in the last 2 years made any wall hangings at all. ( One Hallowee'en paper pieced hanging "Wacky Jack" my Oct. 2013 blog and a paper pieced cats and plants hanging, "Tabby's Place" May 3, 2014 . See Photos below.)

So I decided to rectify that over sight but couldn't really fined a specific pattern that I liked. I looked through my old quilt magazines and saw several Christmas quilts with blocks that I liked so I decided to use 3 different ones and put them together into one wall hanging.

The first block I made was a Snowman block. I had downloaded that pattern off the Connecting Threads website in the fall.  It involved cutting out the 12 1/2 inch square background, which I did from a blue and white fabric that I had bought previously. Next I printed a copy of the template pieces and cut them out.

After that I cut the snowman's various pieces from scrap fabric, his body, hat, arms and carrot nose, plus 3 snowflakes.  I used Steam a Seam 2 to adhere the pieces onto the background, then I used a satin stitch (Stitch # 52 on my Janome 7700 Memory Craft) to stitch around everything, changing the colour of thread as needed.  (On the back I used a thin muslin to give the appliqué some stability.)
Last I used a straight stitch on my machine and black thread to carefully stitch his eyes and smile, going over it twice. Voila he was done and I love his happy smile!

The second block I made was the wreath block. I printed and cut out the template pieces, tracing the wreath pieces on different green fabrics and the bow parts on red fabrics. Again I used Steam a Seam on the backs. The back fabric is a white on white snowflake fabric which I had bought a while back from Connecting Threads.  I arranged all the wreath pieces they way I liked, then pealed the paper off and pressed them on. After that I did the same for the bow pieces and 3 red berries on top.
Last I did t quilting, I free motion quilted the wreath pieces one by one, about  1/3 of an inch in from the edges, but used a satin stitch at the edges of the bow and berries.
(This pattern was from the Mc Call's Quilting magazine December 2012 issue page 68)

The third block I decided to make was the one called Bows and Boughs (from Mc Call's magazine Dec. 2011 issue page 58). It involves paper piecing which I rather like. (More about Bows and Boughs in my next post.)
Again I printed the paper piece patterns on my computer (using thin paper- easy to tear off.)  There were 2 different presents and 4 different bows, plus the trees which all went together to make a quilt, but I just needed one of each for this hanger. I added 3 1/2 inch squares of Christmas fabric under the present and tree blocks to look like  small presents. It was fun to make and it lead to making other present blocks and tree blocks which I turned into 2 table runners, but that's my next blog post. :)

Happy quilting!





Other wall Hangings


Tabby's Place Blog
http://carolasquilting.blogspot.ca/2014_05_01_archive.html

http://carolasquilting.blogspot.ca/2013/10/wacky-jack.html#links
Wacky Jack wallhanging