Crafting our way through the Christmas list

I'd like to think that Chris and I are thoughtful gift-givers. We take the time to listen to our family and friends throughout the year and, then, when it's time to make birthday or Christmas gift lists, we rely on the knowledge gleaned from our relationships with people to find something to give to each of them that has meaning. We're not big on asking for wish lists and, in turn, we aren't big on making and giving wish lists for ourselves, either.

Last year, we made a concerted effort to buy as many handmade items for our friends and family as possible—it was our way to support our local communities and give unique items that would be cherished for years to come. This year, we're setting out to craft our way through our Christmas list. Of course, there will be little things here and there that we cannot make . . . but, for the most part, we're trying to give not only of our wallets and minds, but also of our time.

With just a little over 2 months to go until gift-giving season arrives, we're finally starting to knock out our list.

Up first was Chris' dad. After exploring Flickr for inspiration for what seemed like weeks, we settled on a design and color scheme and set out to order the needed fabrics.

Since most of our gift-giving drama ends up revolving around what to give to Chris' parents for Christmas each year, I really wanted to pull Chris in to the fabric crafting. I asked him to pull ideas from Flickr and to help me with color scheme and collection selection. I'm lucky he's such a good guy and participates almost willingly. :)

We took a few hours one day in September to go down to the big table at my family's bakery and work out the design and composition together. We reworked it until we were happy and settled on large squares (above) composed of blues and greens and small squares (below) composed of browns and greens. It felt like a nice pairing for the golfer of the family—very earth and sky.

In my attempt to not have the quilt be completely random, we chose halfsquare triangles for each large and small square block and labeled and stacked them. I don't know how these piles of pieces made any sense, but they did...

and we ended up with this . . . (PS: I think it's time for a design wall. I can only lay out quilts on the floor and stand on top of my coffee table so many times before something tragic happens) . . . 

I'm sending this one out to the long arm quilter on Monday. I'm just not quick enough to machine quilt on my own with the number of other projects going on around here right now. I'll share more when we get it back in a couple of weeks. I can't wait! 

Oh, and by the way, this design was 100% inspired by Sarah Davies / Chic Quilt Geek's quilt. So, as beautiful as it is, we cannot claim it as our own!