A Star is Born

Here are some gifts I've worked on today - I'm not planning them, but playing around until something emerges. The star potholder came about when I entered the studio and saw the green, negative star image where I'd laid it on an angle on another fabric square when putting things away the night before. I liked the jaunty feel of it, so another potholder was born. The quilt top below it isn't complete yet - I've been enjoying cutting, sewing and piecing strips and this also led to a pieced potholder. For the quilt in the third photo I used white thread to help define the star in the centre, as it was too similar in value to the background square that I had fused it to.

Positives and Negatives

This morning the sunlight made a patchwork on the stairs. I'd been thinking about making something with winter fabric using a positive/negative approach and the idea of a candle shape to signify the light that is extra precious at this time of year, came to mind. I drew one and made a template which I traced onto fused fabric and then cut it out to end up with a positive candle shape and a negative candle outline. I fused the outline onto the red/green/white fabric and then decided it would become a potholder, so I fused that onto the green/gold fabric and sewed it together, adding zigzag quilting with variegated metallic thread around the candle outline, but it doesn't show up as well as I expected it to. With each project, I learn something new. If I were to make this potholder again, I would also only use fusible once, because the hand of the fabric is quite changed - although with a potholder, a little extra body won't matter much. Another thing I didn't foresee was how the fabric underneath the white one shows through. I had planned to use the positive candle shape for my next potholder, but decided I didn't want to hide any of the red/green/white fabric, as I like it. In my eagerness to sew, I forgot to sandwich in the bit of trim for a hanger, so I sewed it onto the potholder top afterwards and covered the ends with a button - after quilting it first, which you can see in the close-up of the back.