Valentine Table Toppers

I love decorating for the Holidays. I really did not have much of anything for Valentines Day. So last week I decided I really needed to make something.

I really like to decorate with table toppers. For this one I used a pattern for the background but did not use the pattern hearts because I wanted these toppers to be done as quickly as possible. I used hearts cut with my Accuquilt Go. For the first one I quilted I did a meander filler. I thought that was taking too long so the rest of them do not have as much quilting.

For the ones I am keeping for myself I did not put a heart in the center because I always sit something there and you do not see it anyway.

For the other toppers I did not use a pattern at all and kept it very simple.

For the heart shapes I used dies I got from Sizzix that I got really cheap on Overstock.com.

The problem with using these dies with my Accuquilt Go is that I think the actual dies are thicker the Accuquilt ones. It really did a number on my cutting mat.

I used fusible web on the back of my hearts and stitched around them while I was quilting.

They really went together quickly and now I have some nice new modern Valentine decorations.

Plus, I have 2 extra to give away. I am giving one to Lou because she takes care of my cats when I go away. The other one is going to Margaret. She won it in the door prize drawing at the Pineapple Workshop last weekend.

Fall Decorating with Quilts

I was just sitting here using my laptop  this morning when I thought," Boy, I have a few fall quilts. Why not take some pictures to put on my blog." The first one is a Thimbleberries pattern. 

I think I made it 2 years ago.

The center of this quilt in my kitchen is from the book Baltimore Country Cousins by Susan McKelvey.  Susan is in one of my guilds. There is a picture of a quilt I made (not this one) in that book. I think I made this top about 2007 and quilted it in 2009.

Fall is my favorite time of year and typically I have always loved fall colors. 

Although, now I am liking brighter stuff.

I made this quilt on the table last year. It is made with a cake stand I purchased at a local quilt show in the summer of 2009. I was fortunate to find fabric in the same line on the Internet. The great part was that it was on sale since it was the previous year's fabric. I put the entire top together on one Friday night. I knew when I was making it that it needed something between the center and the orange border but I did not have other fabric with me and I wanted to finish that night.

I was not happy with it so I added the rick-rack. I sewed the rick-rack down as I was quilting. That was just what it needed and I love it. Who doesn't live rick-rack?

The other thing I did not like at first were the solids in the cake stand. But, once again, now I love them because the quilting really shows in them.

I always have a quilt hanging beside the fireplace to snuggle under if someone gets a bit chilly. This is one of the first quilts I quilted on the longarm. It was done in 2004.