Wednesday, November 25, 2015

A Joyful Christmas Quilt

I bought the Christmas fabric I used for this quilt probably five years ago. I didn't want to get rid of it, but I had always planned on something daring like wonky blocks or a disappearing nine patch, something like that. Truth be told, I no longer felt the same love for these fabrics and I've grown in my knowledge of selecting fabrics, at least enough to know that two of these were directional prints that wouldn't look as good in block form. So after a bit of Pinterest inspiration and seeing simple holiday type words added in a strip pieced quilt, I knew what I wanted to do.

I laid out the backing and batting I had to determine what my finished size quilt should be to help figure with cutting my strips. Then I folded, stacked and sliced imperfect 8" strips of the three fabrics in one fell swoop. I didn't iron anything on this quilt (except the word) until I had it completely pieced and then I only did a quick pass over the seams.

I freehand drew the letters to the size I wanted and used a piece of muslin and wonder under to attach the green letters to the muslin. I embroidered around the letters to hold them permanently in place with black thread and a tight zig zag stitch. Then I added the muslin piece into one of my strips. I bound the quilt in a green cotton from my stash and used a zig zag stitch for finishing the binding.

It's a simple cozy Christmasy throw size quilt, and my boys are fans of it. I'm going to make some slip covers for my sofa pillows with the left over fabric to match.