Christmas in July!

Hi all!

I hope that you have been enjoying your summer so far.  Here is is HOT and very DRY!  We are crying for some rain and a break from the heat.

I decided to get a head start on some samples for my fall classes since it is too hot to do much at all.  I found this neat pattern online and decided to give it a whirl.

 

 

 This is the Sew Easy Strata Star by Ruth Eckersley and it is a really fun pattern to make!  It is all 1.5" strips - which - I of course cut all on my Accuquilt Go! cutter so the cutting was really quick and easy.  I love how this turned out I decided to do my first one in Christmas fabrics because I could just see it in Christmas fabrics.  Now I will have to make more!

 

The one negative about this pattern is the amount of waste.  This isn't even all of it - and it was just too much to throw away.  So, I started to think about what I could do with these strip sets.  I decided to re-cut them into 1.5" strips again

 

Then I randomly joined them back together to make a piece of fabric.   Doesn't that just look like a hat mess?!

 

Next, I trimmed them down (ahh that's better).

 

And, I added some borders so that this was just over 6" wide.  I layered it with some Timtex and did a little top-stitching to hold everything together.  Can you guess what I am making yet??

 

 Next, I cut them into 4 sections all 6" x 4" - now can you guess?

 

Yep!  Christmas fabric postcards!  I got out my plain fabric and my postcard stamp and made some backs.  Every year I do Christmas fabric postcards to send to friends and family.  If you'd like to see some of my previous years cards you can check them out here, here, here and here.

 

Last, but not least, I added my favorite uneven zig-zag stitch around the outside.  Since I usually need around 30 of these every year I was really happy to get a bit of a head start and use up what was going to end up in the garbage :-D

What do you think?  Am I crazy for starting my Christmas work in this July heat?