Winter Door Hanging

Winter Door Hanging

I'm getting better....it's still winter and I finished my last seasonal door hanging! And is winter here with a vengeance today:-)

I always make up my door hangings in sections while trying to incorporate different quilting techniques. Of course, since it's my creation, there has to be lots of colour.


The first thing I did was take out my Christmas fabric stash (I hadn't taken it out yet - I wasn't in a very merry mood). I knew that I didn't want just a Christmas theme, but all of my winter fabrics with snowflakes and such are stored together. I decided that I would use the amazing blue fabric with snowflakes as my sky, so of course, a few stars had to be incorporated.

The second layer includes a couple of shapes I received at the Common Thread Quilt Guild social. I found a lovely Santa with polar bears fabric to add to the reindeer and sleigh.

All Bundled Up Snowman

Looking through my magazines, books and quilting patterns, I found a gorgeous snowman pattern called All Bundled Up designed by Kelly Mueller for The Wooden Bear. It doesn't seem to be available any more - that's really too bad.

Next to the snowman, I incorporated a winter cabin which was paper pieced from the book Quilter's Home - Winter by Lois Krushina Fletcher. I couldn't resist putting the Christmas tree in the window and of course, adding a red door. I was going to appliqué a few trees in the background when I found some lovely fabric with romping deer in a snowy forest. It was just perfect for the background.



At the bottom of the hanging, I added more abstract blocks. I had never made snowball blocks, so I incorporated two of them at one end. I had planned on hand-embroidering the snowflakes within them based on &Stitches' blog but finally I got impatient and used FMQ.

I've been wanting to make a log cabin block in dark and light fabrics for a long time. This was my chance. I adapted Block 8 - Winter Cabin from the Quilter's Home - Winter by Lois Krushina Fletcher.


Finally, the last panel is made up following Rayna Gillman's Create Your Own Free-Form Quilts technique. I've used this technique in several projects and find it most effective when the free-form quilt includes a print as a focal point. I think that so far, my best pieces using this technique are my scrappy Christmas wall hangings.

Although the photos don't really show the quilting (except for the coloured snowflakes within the snowballs and the snowflakes behind the snowman), I used this project to keep practicing my free-motion quilting skills. I echoed around the stars, the reindeer, the sleigh and the circle for the two top panels.

I quilted around the trees in the background as well as the cabin itself. For the log cabin and the free-form blocks, I practiced many of the free-motion quilting background patterns that would fit within 1½ inch strips.

What I learned:

• These door hangings are very improvisational - however, when I put the bottom panel together, I could see that my snowball blocks were too large and sticking out. I really should have reduced the log cabin block or the free-form block by an inch ....but I was too lazy to undo these three blocks. It's too bad, because it would have looked much better. 
• Amazingly enough, the FMQ snowflakes came out well - except that I really could have measured out the six branches of the snowflake. It's a good thing no 2 snowflakes are the same!

I'm really proud of my 4 seasonal door hangings. Here they all are!

Spring Door Hanging

Summer Door Hanging

Winter Door Hanging

Fall Door Hanging

This post is included in the following link-ups:

• Fabric Tuesdays

Go see what's going on in the quilting blog world!

February 10, 2015
Check out the new section on my blog: Projects from Books, Mags and Patterns. Since I learned to create new pages and a navigation bar, I am unstoppable :-) I am sooooo happy that this much fun is NOT illegal!