We are celebrating Christmas in July with all sorts of fun snowflakes and Christmas garlands and plaid!
When designing a quilt, often times we'll come up with the design, and then go fabric shopping to fit exactly what we envisioned. With our Michael Miller Brand Ambassador projects, the fabric comes first! For this month, we knew we wanted a fun pattern that would easily adapt to any fabric collection you found and fell in love with.
This design features Grandma's Christmas Wish with art by Petra Brown. If you want a more traditional Christmas quilt, this collection does include greens, but we are so loving the red and blues in the fabrics we got.
We used 5 different prints to go along with our solid white sashing. A mix of big and little squares means everyone is well represented.
The reds and blues are full of snowflakes, and the cream has the cutest garland full of Christmas cheer. It's a subtle nod to Christmas and could easily be extended through the whole winter season without everyone wondering why your Christmas quilt is still out in February.
This quilt was so easy to make. It could be finished up in a weekend easily. Using strip piecing for some of the blocks and chain piecing to put everything together, we had it done in a few afternoons.
We opted to use the plaid for the binding and I love it! That little bit of extra really seems to frame the entire quilt. I think I love plaid bindings as much as striped ones.
It may seem a little haphazard, but the quilt is actually made up of the large blocks and 5 different layouts for the small blocks. This makes it easy to put them together and takes the guesswork out of the final layout. By using set block layouts, we were able to make sure there was an even distribution of each of the 5 different fabric prints.
So onto the specifics:
Fabric:
Grandma's Christmas Wish by Michael Miller Fabrics
Snowflake Kisses in Cloud
Snowflake Kisses in Lake
Snowflake Kisses in Red
Yuletide Plaid in Red
Winter Wonderland in Multi
Cotton Couture Bright White
We are quickly working on the pattern and after it's tested it will be available as well. This quilt is all traditionally pieced. We love setting quilts on point to easily create diamonds from squares. It finishes out at about 62x80", so perfect for snuggling with next to the fire all winter long.
As far as quilting on this one, I kept it simple, a fun loopy design back and forth creates texture while being quick and easy to do.
I don't think I've ever had a Christmas project done this early, and now that it's finished, I don't want to put it away! Do you think anyone will notice if I just leave it out and use it now? Maybe I'll just have to make a second one in everyday fabric for all year.
Happy Quilting!
Kimie and Missy
