Christmas Quilt

 I squeezed one more quilt finish in 2020.
This was a kit I bought while on vacation in Tennessee.
It's a super simple quilt.
The instructions said to cut all fabric into 8 inch squares and create 9 rows of 7 blocks.
My goal was to be done by Christmas. (Insert some chuckles here.)
I missed my goal by a few days.
I did get it done the same weekend as Christmas. I think that's pretty good.

It took me 4 weekends to get this done.

That's record time for me!

Laying it out to see where I want the blocks to go.

Sewing technique called chain piecing.

I learn something new with each project I work on.

This one was no exception.

I learned how to chain piece entire rows.

So much easier to keep track of where the pieces go.

I had the top sewn together in no time.

I found a piece of batting in my stash that was from a thrift store.

It was sort of the perfect size.

I say sort of because you're supposed to have batting that overlaps the top by a couple of inches all around. The extra allows for possible shifting of the fabric during the quilting process. This piece had about an inch on the sides. That's cutting it pretty close, which meant I had to be really careful with the quilting. I wanted to baste this on the quilting frame so I wouldn't have to crawl on the floor with my grumpy knee. I'm not experienced enough with my frame yet to do that...so it was the floor.

I survived the basting and iced the knee.

I'm happy to report that the quilt didn't shift at all while it was being quilted!

I bought this quilt kit with the intension of keeping it as a family Christmas quilt.

I liked the old fashioned ornaments on the fabric.

This is evidence of one lesson that was learned the hard way.

I have used Crayola's washable markers for YEARS to mark my quilting lines.

You're supposed to test it on a scrap piece before marking on the project. I actually did that this time but not on all of the fabrics, just a few. I don't usually do this because I've NEVER had an issue. Ever. As you can see, I had some lines that didn't wash out. The funny part is that it's only on the poinsettia fabric. It washed out of all the others. The good news is that it's hardly noticeable at a distance...and it won't change how snuggly the quilt is. ;)

I found some simple holly fabric for the backing.

The boys thought the fabrics looked like wrapping paper.

So I decided to quilt simple lines to imitate the look wrapped gifts.

I also decided to name the quilt "Wrapping Paper"

I can't believe it's my 39th quilt!

Wrapping Paper Quilt

#39

51" x 65 1/2"

machine pieced and quilted