2011 December | toadusew

Archive for December, 2011

New Give Away – Are You A Procrastinator or Over Achiever?

Monday, December 5th, 2011

This contest is now closed -thank you so much for all your comments, we loved reading them and getting to know you!
Congratulations to our winner – Allison Gougeon!

The Loot….
Blue & White Triplets Kit!
Includes all the precut template pieces, binding, backing and a Quilters World Magazine where the pattern was published!

The Rules….
To play, simply tell us how you deal with the gift giving season by leaving a comment that answers the question below….
We’ll randomly pick a winner a on Monday December 12th.

Question…

Are you like Chloe or Colleen when it comes to showering your loved ones with gifts?
Chloe: OMG – Is it Christmas already? TG for visa and amazon.com!
Colleen: Everything was ready before Thanksgiving my dear and home made to boot!

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Colleen’s Home Made Christmas Gift Marathon

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

Homemade Christmas’s are the BEST!! Around November 1^st I started to think about Holiday Gifts. As always I wanted to make them but since I was still living out of boxes in tentative housing while I wait to have our new home built I knew this would be a challenge. Half of my sewing gear is still packed and the few things I had out would necessitate creativity and simplicity. Then I remembered the Toadusew Triplets Christmas Runner we designed for Quilter’s World Magazine in 2010. I dug into my Christmas stash and started working. I had my husband running the GO cutter and I started sewing. I made 16 tablerunners within a week. Oh, but the challenge wasn’t over I still had to quilt them. Since my quilting machine was still packed away I had to think of another creative alternative – I could have just ditched them all but would have been bored to death by the end.

I decided to quilt them with quilt embroidery and make each one a little different. It took a bit longer than I imagined but it was such fun to decide who would get which motif. I’m very proud of my “Homemade Christmas Gifts”. If you need some quick and easy last minute gifts be we do have some great kits on sale, including the original pre-cut Triplets Kits that inspired all 14 of the runners I made. As a holiday treat, I’ve written up the instructions to make the round version as a Holiday Freebie (click here to download) to share with everyone.

If you don’t have to have an embroidery machine or a GO! Cutter, you can still make these fast and easy runners as last minute Christmas gifts – just download the free pattern from our Freebies Section and enjoy!

If you have a Homemade Holiday story please share it with it us! Here’s a couple we received from some Toadusew customers using some of our Holiday inspired designed…

Holiday Sparkle from Barbara…

Back in February Chloe granted us permission to use your “Holiday Sparkle” design for our annual church raffle. The quilt was machine pieced and hand quilted by the Sacristy Stitchers of the Catholic Community of St. John Neumann in Califon, NJ. As you can see, we increased the size to 25 blocks and used Asian fabrics. Our group of 12, the Sacristy Stitchers, did all the piecing and hand quilting. We followed the suggestion in the article to use a large scale print that allowed for fussy-cutting the blocks and the setting squares. Then we used the design in the fabric and seam lines as our quilting outlines. The only marking we did was on the sash and border. If you look closely, you might be able to see that we used two different fussy cuts for the blocks: the center block and the perimeter blocks are geometric and the 8 inside blocks around the center block are floral.
-Asian Holiday Sparkle submitted by Barbara Gates, Califon, NJ

Celebration from Donna…

I finished the revised Celebration 4-block runner! Will mail it soon to my daughter in California. My other children think it is beautiful and that Kimmi will love it. Her table is sort of a light pine. It was fun to make. Thanks so much for the help providing the new layout. (And the reds turned up in the center, rather than the green, but that’s ok.) The green on the back is perfect!
- Modified 4 block Celebration Runner by Donna McGuire

Happy Holiday Sewing!

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Circular Tumbleblock Table Topper

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

Pattern available for free download courtesy of Colleen Reale of Toadusew.
Fast, Easy last minute holiday gift you can make in less than a day using your stash!
[Download Circular Tumbleblock Table Topper]

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