Alex's Holiday Lights Quilt

[Charae H.]

What yummy fabrics, Renata!!

[Renata L.]

Thanks Charae--I originally purchased them over the summer (along with some red fabric) for a holiday bed quilt, but there was enough there to do both that and Holiday Lights!

[Lois B.]

I am liking this quilt! I want to make them all! Time!? &%???!! Yikes!!

[Renata L.]

Okay, folks, here's my Holiday Lights on the design wall. I've moved things around, took a photo and am posting in case you want to play along .. :lol: I'll take a break and relook in a bit. Happy to play with your choices too.

Did not have a design wall because of lack of wall space so yesterday I found a $3.19 flannel-backed vinyl tablecloth at Joann's, hung it on our bedroom closet door and, voilà, a makeshift design wall--difficult to do this quilt without one.

Anyone else out there making Holiday Lights?

[Margo C.]

It looks GREAT, Renata!!

[Charae H.]

This is wonderful, Renata! Wouldn't change a thing. Fighting the urge to leave my office, run home and get started... on the other hand, I probably should stay where I am and get pay checks written~ or not!

[Renata L.]

Thanks Margo and Charae. I don't know why but this is one quilt I just keep wanting to work on and can't stop--did not go to sleep last night until all the blocks were ready to go on the wall. Now, I'm ready to look at my fabrics for the half square triangles and when I get bored with putting rows together I'll make 156 (?) half-square triangles.

Charae, hurry up and get the checks done and run home! You can do both!!! :lol:

Thanks, Alex, for a fun quilt to make. Will you forgive me if I put Chinese New Year lanterns and firecrackers instead of lights in the border or Santa riding a dragon? :lol:

[Susan B.]

Renata, I think your quilt looks awesome!

[Hannelore N.]

Oh yes, a Christmas dragon would be amazing, Renata! Beautiful blocks!!

[Lois B.]

I am still wanting to be making this quilt! So much fun! You are tempting me big time!

[Renata L.]

Lois, it was so easy to cut and put together--I chain-pieced the blocks and that made it go faster. I just found my green and red fabric that will become the half-square triangle border and I've got Brenda Henning's Triangulation software to download the papers and make forty HSTs per page. Of course, you can do it with Edyta Sitar's papers, Thangles or either of the two methods Alex offered in her video. Lots of choices here... and it really is fun!

Thanks, Sue. I'm really tempted, Lorchen...

[Nancy R.]

Renata -

Your colors are so wonderful! Thanks so much for posting the picture! I LOVE it!!

If you are looking for suggestions, one change that I would make just based on the photo (the colors might look different in person) would be to move around the 5 trees whose background has more yellow in them. To my eye, they stand out a bit more than the others and they are kind of clustered so I would just play with moving them around a bit.

Your colors are just so lovely and I think it's going to look even better when you add the borders with a bit of red sparkle! I can't wait to see what applique you end up with in the final border! I might have to make this quilt next year when I have more time....

Nancy

[Andree B.]

Renata, that looks beautiful!

I will begin this week-end. I have lots of green batiks, and probably will make the background blue. And definitely paper-piece the borders. I don't want to think about that perfect 1/4 inch!

Love your idea of lantern, I might change the lights for different ornaments... not sure... let's start with the trees and see how that goes.

Andrée

[Renata L.]

Thanks Nancy. I think you are talking about the blocks with the gold-leaf looking background, but since things probably look different on our screens could you point out one of them as, for example, Column 3 (from the left), Row 2, so that I know exactly which block you had in mind? I think I know but I want to make sure. There are eight of those blocks, but you saw five (if we're talking about the same one) so the flash may be playing on them but I definitely check for clustering if you can confirm the one you're referring to. Really appreciate your keen eye!

Andrée, so glad you are playing too. When you paper-piece the border, do you simply create a paper for a long set of half-square triangles? Never done it so I'm curious if that's an alternative I should be exploring because the perfect 1/4" is a challenge for anyone. :lol:

[Nancy R.]

Hi Renata -

The ones that jump out at me are:

column 3, 2nd from the top
column 4, 4th from the top
column 5, 5th from the top
column 6, 7th from the top
(these kind of make a straight, diagonal line across the quilt)
column 8, 5th from the top

Like you say, it's probably in the picture/monitor rather than the blocks themselves, but I wanted to point them out just in case.

Nancy