Holiday Candle

One of my UFOs was this holiday candle pattern called Candles Aglow by Castilleja Cotton designs. I'd purchased a yard of a beautiful gold star fabric for the border when I bought the pattern. Even though the guild UFO challenge for 2009 officially ended last month I decided to work on this anyway because I wanted something new to hang on my front door as part of my Christmas decorating. The hard part was selecting the fabric. Believe it or not, I do not have an extensive collection of Christmas fabric. But once I got past that it took no time to trace and iron on the applique pieces. There are only 9 of them. So I got the top made and quilted the background and candles. I used a gold metallic thread to quilt flames in the background. I had to fool around with needle sizes to prevent the thread from shredding and then it was pretty smooth.

This is how far I got by Saturday afternoon:

But when I went back to work on it on Sunday I looked at my leftover gold fabric and realized I had enough to make a second one, or even a couple of small versions. And here's what I came up with:

The "big" one measures 14" x 24". This smaller version is only 10" x 13.5" and does not have the heavy background quilting. I made 2 of them and finished them up tonight. One will be a gift for a friend. The other will be my very first blog giveaway! So, if you read all the way to the end of this post, be sure to leave a comment by 0500 GMT Saturday morning (midnight Friday night U.S.--EST) and you'll be entered in a random drawing to win. I will ship outside the U.S. Last I looked I only have a couple dozen readers of this blog. So the odds of winning are excellent. Good luck!

Comments

  1. Beautiful. Your Christmas fabric is lovely. Christmas time is always so hectic, it's nice you had time to create something so beautiful.

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  2. Oh, Phyl, I love this pattern...great job! I'm so glad that I decided to quickly check your blog, now I can be entered into your contest...yay!

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  3. You are so talented!

    Your photos crack me up. We're all obsessive about *something*, aren't we?

    LOL
    Cher :-)

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  4. oh my god phyl, seriously these are absolutely gorgeous (and im not sucking up to help win ;) hand made decorations are 90 million times more special, and what a joy for you to be able to make something like this for yourself! even buying something hand made in the store isn't as nice.

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  5. Thank you so much ladies for your kind words about my candles!

    Thanks to random.org, the winner is Tara Marie! Congrats and I hope you enjoy it. Please email me at phylqb [at] gmail [dot] com with an address for me to send it to. If I hear from you soon enough you should get it by Christmas.

    Thanks to you all for stopping by my blog.
    Merry Christmas!

    True Random Number Generator

    Min: 1
    Max: 4
    Result: 1
    Powered by RANDOM.ORG

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  6. Phyl,

    I just emailed you :) Thank you so much. I've been off line for several day--trying desperately to be ready for Christmas on time :)

    Tara

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  8. What beautiful beautiful Christmas quilting masterpieces -- thanks for bringing them to life! :)

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  9. Thanks, Janet! As always, they were fun to make. I've finished the larger piece and as soon as my Christmas Camera is delivered I plan to post a picture.

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  10. Hi Phyl,
    Sorry I haven't been by in a while. This quilt hanging is so beautiful! Congratulations to Tara Marie. I'm sure it will look nice wherever she displays it.

    I hope you and your family had a very Merry Christmas, Phyl! :)

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  11. Thanks, Christine! We had a great time visiting my side of the family. The time went by too quickly. Hope you enjoyed being in your new, enlarged house!!

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  12. The quilt has arrived and it's beautiful :) Thank you.

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  13. You're so welcome, Tara Marie. And thank you again for letting me know it arrived safely.

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