I named this piece "Ready to decorate" because it reminds me of taking all the Christmas balls out of storage and lining them up ready to put them on the tree.
Please excuse the color in the photos for this post. The background fabric is a pure white with embossed snow flakes but my lighting just kept giving me this beige color. The piece is so much more dramatic and wintery with the white, oh well!
The whole idea for this quilt started with this Mulberry Lane charm pack from Contempo that was hiding in my stash. The pack was a free gift and I've had it for a while. So free quilt right?? Well ... as always I seemed to find myself at the quilt store for just a little something. But really isn't that that the fun part!
Above: detail photo of the ornament blocks and sashing.
Below: photo of the ornament blocks construction. First I used a finished 4.5" ball of the ornament. Then I added a strip for the ornament top, a 1.5" X 1.5" silver top with 1.5" wide white background strip on each side. It's hard to see in the photo but when free motion quilting I added a loop above each silver top for the ornaments hanger.
Sashing around the ornaments is 2" wide white strips with 2" square green cornerstone blocks.
I really enjoy quilt and textile history so if I find myself working with blocks or parts of blocks that I feel have a historical background story I like to learn more about their history and reference them as much as I can. The ball for my ornament block was pulled from a portion a vintage snowball block I found in a quilt block reference book.
The complete Snowball Block (or Snow Ball Block) can be found on page 153-4 of Jenny Beyer's book The quilter' Album of Patchwork Patterns. Reference notes include "Flagstone", 1928, "Snow Ball", 1935" and "Old fashioned Quilts", 1935".
Also, in the Jenny Beyer book page 292-7 is the "Job's Trouble" block ca. 1906. I found this block after making my quilt but it is a much clearer example of the ball portion of my ornament.
Above the templates for the Christmas Trees used in my borders.
The borders were interesting to design. Because I have trees that cross into the rows of ornaments care was taken to piece the rows of ornaments vertically then the rows were connected in sections that allowed for the trees.
Fabric for the ornaments was a charm pack (Mulberry Lane by Contempo). The fabrics for the trees was a variety of greens and browns from my stash. My fabric shopping trip was for all that white background, the cotton backing and a 100% white cotton batting.
Finished size, 53" X 62.5".
Free motion quilting was done on my domestic machine; the background is a meandering design with some trees each of the ornaments has it's own decorative design.
I hope everyone is enjoying getting ready for the holidays!
Merry Christmas!!
MaryEllen
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