Tis The Season quilt

Here's another exquisite embroidered quilt from Rumpled Quiltskins. It's called "Tis The Season". I think it's available as a kit from RQ in Okotoks, AB.

Linda, the store owner, is always challenging me to stretch myself - use stitch motifs that are new, think outside the box. Sometimes I resist, but in the end, I always end up learning!

The fabric used for this store sample was a thick, shimmery, satin-ish fabric, which really shows off the quilting textures. For this one, the new parts that were encouraged by Linda were the pine needles, holly leaves, and pine cones. I love the way they turned out. It worked up really easily and quickly, and I can definitely foresee using this design idea again in the future!

I also incorporated my good-ole standby - ribbon candy - by using it in a 45º striped effect. But the thing that got me REALLY excited was that there are ACTUAL ribbon candy in the embroidery throughout the quilt. Ribbon candy ON ribbon candy!

There was also a 45º stripe pattern in the blue borders, which I hoped look candy caney. More notes among the pictures below. Merry Christmas in April!

Holly leaves and berries, as a meandering filler within the outer border.

Here you can see my rendition of pine needles and pinecones surrounding the snow globe embroidery. You can also see how I treated the sashings with Christmas phrases. I echoed 1/4" around all the letters, then filled with a really tight serpentine pattern, so that the letters really popped. Linda thought it looked like there was snow sitting on the letters. I also thought it looked like old-fashioned, really fine-quality Christmas cards, with embossed lettering. That's what I was going for, at least.

Here's another new experiment for me. I sprinkled in some Christmas tree ornaments among simple meandering loops.