Carlene Foster's Gallery : Template Piecing, Christmas

Christmas Pillow shams

Carlene Foster — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 19:28:13 GMT

Ever want to just decorate a pillow for the holidays, and then be able to go back to the normal decor? I made two of these shams to adorn a holiday seating arrangement. When the holidays are over, they can be stored with the Christmas decorations until next year, without having to dedicate special space for the actual pillows. Just slip over the throw pillows you already own. I could think of making these with someone's favorite color schemes for birthday celebrations as well. Marti Michell template set L and her Encyclopeida of PatchWork Blocks, Volume 4 were the inspiration for this creation. (That, and my obsession with Robert Kaufman's Christmas fabric from last year that I still own a bag of scraps from <grin>)

Black, white and red allover

Carlene Foster — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 15:05:51 GMT

This is a technique using a special ruler called a "Twister'. This particular throw used one fq bundle and some yardage for the outer border. It isn't very large, and I still have a stack of biased red, white and black 4 patches left over from the process. I am not a fan of the waste that you get from this tool. You start with a charm pack, or a bunch of 5 x 5 patches, sew them all together, then use the tool to cut a piece of every intersecting seams. I have cats, so there were many times that I feared my stack of petals would be rearranged until I could get back to them. By the time I had done this throw, I was over the process. Maybe as a one or two item accent......potholders. a cornerstone for a larger quilt that you just want to do something different....but, I'm not a whole quilt fan of this tool.

St. Louis Star Table Runner

Carlene Foster — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:38:44 GMT

I had 3 stars leftover from my other Flourish projects, so I made a table runner just to make certain these choice pieces didn't end up in a pieced quilt backing later on. I'm thinking that since I always seem to have excess binding at the end of a project and usually manage to miscount blocks along the way anyway, this might be a small project I'll be doing more of with the leftovers. These table runners can also be used for festive dresser scarves, or instead of quilting, could be stuffed and used as a decorative pillow (with a few minor modifications). Creative juices are flowing........ :)

Flourishing St. Louis Star

Carlene Foster — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:34:50 GMT

This is my third quilt this season from Robert Kaufman's Flourish fabric. I am hoping there is only enough left to make a table runner or something small. I'm ready to be finished with this fabric, although it is still my favorite so far. The pattern for the stars is from Toby Lisshko's St. Louis Star. The large one is 16 inches, the smaller are 10 inches. If you have a chance to check out her book, you will see how sinfully easy these stars are....there are no Y seams. My biggest challenge was that I ran out of the green fabric and had to really scrimp to make it go as far as it did. That was the beauty of the St. Louis Star pattern. You can make a lot out of a little. The quilt pattern itself is one of my own making.....I'm not certain how much of a design you can call this, but I definitely did not have a pattern beyond the stars themselves.