If it helps, there are 24 basket sampler blocks. Maybe you could do 2 blocks of each of the 12 days? Those blocks finish at 6" x 6" and are set on point.

Oh, JoJo, you read my mind! I went to sleep last night thinking about unusual ways to add the rest of the twelve, without necessarily doing 10 lords, etc. I'm not as good at embroidery as you are, otherwise that would be a good option. I'm thinking all the corners where the appliques are might be good places, but it would be fun, too, to figure out some unusual places to put some of the other eleven. I went to the quilt store today, and found my fabrics for my non-Christmas BOM (I'll post that as soon as I finish this post), and also looked a bit at background fabrics for behind the partridge in the center (JoJo, I am seriously holding you responsible for this -- I do not need to add another BOM to my already overflowing plate!), and found two I really liked, but they would take very different colors. One had a really soft green poinsettia print on cream, but that would require more muted greens and reds. It was gorgeous though, and would be lovely! The other was brighter and would work with brighter greens and reds. I'm hoping to pull all the reds and greens from my stash, so I'll have to see which I have more of before I decide. I also want to have a fair amount of gold and yellow, so I'll have to see.

RGold wrote:
Thanks Robin! That helped me a lot with that center part that I was worried about. Oh, and I love the idea of the partridge in the center. In fact, with the 12 days of Christmas in mind, wouldn't it be fun to find creative ways to add all of the items (turtle dove, french hen, calling bird, golden ring, geese a laying, swans a swimming, maids a milking, ladies dancing, lords a leaping, pipers piping, drummers drumming). I would definately add the partridge in the center and then you don't have to add all of the other items in the same way. It could be more subtle with hand embroidering just the words.

This is so much fun!

msquiltlady wrote:
Marilyn, if you order a Beloved Beauties kit, you will receive a chart showing which fabrics to use as replacements for the Bear Essentials. Because of the stripes and the large print fabric, it just didn't work out to do a one-to-one replacement, so there will be an additional set of instructions for the Beloved Beauties. I tried to use the designs of all the fabrics to their best advantage, so even the yardages are different. The total is the same, but the proportions are different.

Is there a specific fabric that you need to know the yardage for? If you are asking about the border print used for the center medallion, there will be one yard of that fabric in the kits, but not all of it will be necessary for the first month. If you are going to be using a different striped fabric, it will depend on spacing of the repeat of the fabric, and how many repeats each yard contains, but a yard should be plenty to make the fussy cuts.

And if you don't want to do the fussy cut miters, you will be able to substitute one of the plainer fabrics! You may just have to switch some fabrics for the last border and baskets, but that's an easy change.

I know that this may be a little confusing at the beginning, but with the additional sets of instructions, I'm hoping that even if you aren't using the Beloved Beauties fabrics, you may get some alternative ideas to add to Sue's wonderful design!

Yes, JoJo, it will be fun! And thanks to you, my head has spent the evening designing a center for a Christmas version of Ruffled Roses ... first I was thinking about poinsettias like you're planning to use, then I remembered that I've been wanting to do a 12 Days of Christmas quilt and wouldn't the center be perfect for the partridge in a pear tree and ... Oh my! Anyhow, in the process of looking for the partridge image I have in my head (I can't draw worth beans, so I always have to start from something), I came across a book by Kim Schaefer that I have. She's got a lovely poinsettia quilt, so I went looking to see if I could find an image on the Internet for you, and I did! So take a look at this: http://books.google.com/books?id=L2aDX6GyhPUC&pg=PA37&lpg=PA37&dq=Kim+Schaefer+poinsettia&source=bl&ots=UBIwX9Pdzm&sig=qw2TvsHYtMMbxO79xJ7d-ZWODKk&hl=en&ei=BEsMTdLjMsP-8AbNn_z8DQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
What she's got is three circles in the center and a few lighter leaves. In another quilt in that same book, she just has one center circle and no center leaves.

Margo, can you convert the Beloved Beauties fabric to the P & B chart on their website? I'm a little confused .

I know -- how funny! Must be the Spirit of the Season taking over. We are going to have a wonderful array of Christmas quilts. I can hardly wait to see them come together.

I agree with JoJo! Your wonderful accent is really a pleasure to hear, Margo!
And JoJo, look what you've started with the Christmas quilt idea!!

Oh shoot. I really would love to hear that wonderful accent of yours teaching us. Thank you for preparing the PDF files though. And, no one has an ironing surface that looks good. If they do, then they don't iron!

Actually, I declined the offer to be on camera! My tutes will just be PDF files which you can either just download to your computer, or print out and add to your notebook in addition to Sue's directions. I hope that I've added enough photos to make everything very clear. I expect I'll hear about it if I didn't!!

I just wish that I had replaced my work/ironing surface before I took all those pictures!

Yes, Robin and I did talk about that wonderful border strip of yours.

We are hoping that TQS purchased you a video recorder so we can watch you LIVE IN ACTION! The Daily Blog should have a count down that reads: "Margo, the Superquilter and Beloved Quilting Master coming soon to a theater (computer) near you! Click here <_> to join in on all the fun. Don't delay --- you won't want to miss out on a minute of the exciting 2011 adventures.

Thank you, Margo. JoJo and I were discussing border stripes for Ruffled Roses this morning, and we figured you might come up with advice for us!

If you haven't watched it in a while, you might want to head over to the CLASSROOMS link and review the Jinny Beyer Episode 2 "Using Border Prints".

There are some great ideas there that will be useful for our Beloved Beauty version of the BOM, both for the setting triangles that we will make in Month One and for the 24 sampler baskets that we will be making.

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