Windham Wednesdays with Fiesta - Olé!

I never would have thought of sewing with fabric that celebrates the Mexican holiday "Day of the Dead." You know - sugar skulls and other spooky images. I was raised in California and knew about this. I had a lot of Mexican friends whose families observed it. Fine with me. I got the Easter Bunny and chocolate eggs and some candy canes at Christmas. Plenty of sugar for me!

My middle daughter fell in love with some beautiful sugar skull flower pots from Trader Joe's. Windham has the Fiesta line and sent me some fabrics! Big WOW! And they aren't scary, either.

Fiesta Collection by Windham Fabrics
There are two other fabrics (guitars and sugar skulls) that have the black background, but I didn't get any of that. But I was ready to stitch up some fun things. I looked around on Pinterest and saw a large quilt with a sugar skull in the center of a Dresden Plate. That was good enough for me. I had no idea what size the blocks were, if they used an 18 degree wedge ruler, etc. I just started cutting.

I grabbed my cottage cheese lid and drew a circle on freezer paper, cut out the center and cut out this happy looking face. I interfaced it and it was ready to be the center!

Fussy cutting a Sugar Skull motif
I cut 8" high Dresden Wedges using my own ruler. I added that yellow/gold from Windham's Bedrock collection because I needed a 5th color.

Smiling Sugar Skull with 4 sets of 5 blades.
Here's a pic of my multi-sized Dresden Ruler (8" height). You probably have something similar to this. If you have my Modern Vortex pattern, it's the same size. Each of my wedges for the Sugar Skull was cut from a single (not stripped) fabric.

My Dresden/Vortex ruler
Here's my Bedrock (what I have left from sewing various projects). It's an awesome blender. I've included it several times here in blogville. I was able to get 4 golden wedges from my scraps.

Bedrock blenders by Windham Fabrics
Now, back to those wedges. I stitched them, but Little Miss Sugar Skull wanted to be in the picture (again).

Little Miss Sugar Skull and my 20 dresden wedges.
Stitched 5 wedges together and then appliquéd to a background square. And 3 more times. Trimmed away background fabric BEFORE joining the 4 squares together.


 Appliquéd the interfaced Sugar Skull to the center and trimmed away excess.
Back of Dresden ring
And here she is, right where she wanted to be: center stage, smiling at us!
20-1/2" Dresden with Sugar Skull center
Little Miss Sugar Skull wanted some company, so I gave her two friends disguised as mug rugs. This uses my Coffee Cups paper pieced pattern.

Two Sugar Skull mug rugs (aka, Coffee Cups)
I've made this many times before using several other collections. One was with Mimosa.

Paper pieced Coffee Cups using the 2015 Mimosa Collection by Windham

Here are 10 of them I still haven't finished. Not sure if I want to put them into a quilt.
10 more Coffee Cups!
So, if you're interested, you can find the patterns for:

Comments

  1. Love these and they fussy cut so nicely!! Hope all is well with you my friend.

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    Replies
    1. Yes, I love my cottage cheese and yogurt lids. Perfect circles! And freezer paper is my go-to template material.

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  2. I love the fabric line and I love what you did with it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Charlene. I have another line like this that Michael Miller is sending at the end of the year. it's a bit spookier, but since it's only fabric and not real ghouls, I can manage. Thanks for stopping by.

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Thanks for stopping by Debby Kratovil Quilts! If you had a question and don't get an answer from me, please feel free to email me at: kratovil@his.com