Christmas cheer and a Happy New Year

Here is a little decoration that I made for a friend for Christmas, it was fun and quite easy to make. I only made the one, as usual I left all Christmas crafting to the last minute and ran out of time. I'm hoping to create some more of these during the year for next Christmas, you never know, it might just happen.

Dreaming Twins

 Dreaming Twins Sketch and completed, created using acrylic paint, prisma colour pencils and tombow markers.

Finished quilt

This is the finished quilt, I am not used to the whole blogging thing and really don't know what I am doing here so until I figure it all out the quilt steps will be out of order. I think I  need to post backwards.
Any way it's all below, out of order. I hope you like it.

Rag quilt steps part two

 I then arranged all the squares to get an idea of how I wanted the quilt to look, just as a side note I arranged the squares to create an alternating pattern on the back as well. Then I stitched the squares together in rows using a 1/2 inch seam, then stitched the rows together, then lastly stitched around the entire border 1/2 inch from the outer edge again using the red top stitch thread.  Having removed the corners on each of the blocks reduced the bulk in the joins.

 I then snipped all the seams, the outer edge of the quilt and the raw edge of the stars using the rag Quilt snips.

 I used a lot of top stitch thread.

 I then washed the quilt in the washing machine and threw it in the dryer to fluff up the cut edges.

this is how I created my quilt

 I cut up my old denim jeans into 6 1/2 inch squares, then I chose two flannelette fabrics for the backing and cut these into 6 1/2 inch squares.

I chose four red and white cotton fabrics for the stars and cut these into 5 1/2 inch squares, then I cut the wadding into 5 1/2 inch squares.

To create the stars for my quilt I used a Fiskars shape template and traced the star onto the wrong side of 24 denim squares, then I cut along the trace line from the inside leaving the edges of the square intact.

 To create the star blocks layer a 6 1/2 inch square of backing flannelette right side down, then layer a 5 1/2 inch square of wadding in the centre of the flannelette. Place one of the 5 1/2 inch red and white fabric squares on top of the wadding right side up.

 Layer the denim square with the cut out star on top right side up then pin in place.

 Six of each red and white stars pinned and ready to sew.

 I sewed around each star using red top stitch thread and just red sewing thread in the bobbin a little more than 1/4 inch from the raw edge.

 These are the sewn star blocks, where I didn't back tack I pulled the threads through to the back then tied them off.

For all the other blocks I layered the backing flannelette right side down then the smaller wadding in the centre then the denim square on top. I sewed straight through all three layers diagonally with the top stitch thread as before.

 Once all my 99 squares were sewn I cut a 1/2 inch square out of each corner of all the squares using the Fiskars rag quilt snips.