Christmas Celebration Gift Row

There are eight blocks to make in this fourth installment of the Shabby Fabrics Christmas Celebration Row Quilt series. Gifts are made out of these fabrics. The pale blue ornaments #23, the green snowmen #25, and the wonky red gingham #29 from the Emmitt and Ivy Sweetwater line for Moda are new to this fourth row. It is always a nice surprise to see the new additions each month.

Numbers 6&14, 4&22, 23&28, and 25&29 pairs to make four gifts, then the four pair trade positions, 14&6, 22&4, 28&23, and 29&25, for the other four gifts. I cut the eight fabrics four layers at a time, to assure cleaner cuts. I label my pieces with letters. The pattern does not assign the pieces letters, but this is a habit I use that helps me keep organized. I write the letter on the pattern and then clip it to the piece with my Alphabitties and WonderClips. A letter is easier to reference than the dimensions of a piece.

First I made up the four gifts from the 6&14 and 4&22 combinations starting with the upper portion of the bow on the top of the gift. These went really quick. The cut off corners were too small for me to try to make them into pinwheels as I often do. I was only constructing the block parts with no extra freebies from the scraps. Here are the tops of four gifts.

Then I made the bulk of the gift itself using the wider fabric pieces for the wrapping paper and the narrower pieces for the ribbon. I made a group of four at a time from two pair of complimentary fabrics 6&14, 14&6, 4&22, and 22&4.

 

I repeated the process for fabrics 23&28 and 25&29, making the other four gifts

Instead of all eight gifts adjacent in a row, they were divided up into two groups of three and a central group of two. In this case I used my Alphabitties for a different purpose— to denote the letter of the completed block as specified in the pattern.

Here is the whole row assembled. It is 9½" high and 50½" long. It is long enough that my design wall is not wide enough and the row needs to wrap around the corner on the left.

I made up this row within a day of it arriving in the mail. Now I have a whole long month to wait until the next row installment comes. But I like the pacing, and the project does not become overwhelming. Besides, now I have an imposed window to make progress on all those other UFOs I have been avoiding.

Links to the previous three rows in this series are: 5/29/26 stockings, 5/30/26 trees, 5/31/26 stars.

Christmas Celebration Star Row

The first row in the Christmas Celebration Row of the Month Club at Shabby Fabrics was stars. I'd made the second row of Stockings in my post for 5/29/26 and my third row of Trees in my previous post before sewing up the stars. Now I am looking back and making the Star row.

The stars are basically four flying geese blocks around a central square. I have a Bloc-Loc tool which works well to make flying geese. The tool requires cutting the fabric a slight ¼" larger than the norm. Although I have extra fabric provided in the kit, it was not of the dimension that allowed me the luxury of oversizing without some creative positioning. That's OK. I can use my old standard method. The flying geese of the star points still yielded me enough HSTs to make two pinwheels per star for a total of twelve pinwheels.

Each row of Christmas Celebration introduces a few new fabrics from the Emmitt and Ivy Sweetwater collection by Moda. The red/white ornament and the pale blue snowmen, marked by blue star in the following image, are new in this row of stars. None of the stripes from the stockings are repeated. I look forward for when other fabric options from the line appear. Perhaps they will be used in the upcoming rows:  4) Gifts, 5) Wreaths, and 6) Ornaments.

I am one half of the way through my row making (3 out of 6) and it is still fun. Yay! Next row installment has been shipped and I eagerly await its arrival in the mail any day now.