Back in November I joined Lori Holt's Christmas Quilty Fun Sew Along using her book "Quilty Fun." You can see more about my start here. It was a great scrap project and I only had to buy a bit of Christmas fabric including this all things Christmas backing fabric and peppermint stripe binding fabric to make this fun sampler quilt.
I finished it in early December and hung it in front of the drafty fireplace insert just as I had been doing with smaller quilts all year. In fact, one of my goals for the New Year of 2015 is a different quilt for each month for this spot.
It looked great hanging below my Santa collection. When I took it down yesterday I added the final touch.
Lori also designed a label for the back as she often does for her quilts.
Isn't it cute? Everyone else thought so as well and soon there were Quilty Fun little snowmen mini quilts popping up on Lori's Instagram sew along account. I loved that little snowman and decided that he would be the start of my January fireplace quilt.
Once again, this was a scrappy project. The new fabrics I bought included the darling snowy vintage house fabric from the UK for the backing, the vintage looking floral for the outside border, and the little blue star (snowflake) sprinkled on white used for the sashing and borders. I used the leftovers from the snowman backgrounds for the chubby chevron border which is also in Lori's "Quilty Fun" book.
Honestly, isn't that ribbon like border just the cutest. If you cut carefully, you can cut the snowman backgrounds from a 10" square layer cake piece. I used two, the red and darker green, that I already had on hand to max out the nine blocks I wanted to make using smaller prints and designs.
The 8 1/2 inch blocks were sashed with 2 1/2 inch wide fabric strips. I fussy cut 2 1/2 inch squares from the house fabric for the posts. The outer border is 3 inches. I made sure that the quilt was not wider than my directional backing fabric.
When the top was finished, I just knew it needed to be bound in yellow. Fortunately, I had some left from my Aunt Grace's Flower Garden quilt.
It worked well as some of my snowmen backgrounds were also leftovers from my Aunt Grace quilt.
I love having this cheerful quilt during wintery January.
It makes me happy every time I look at it.
I machine quilted it on my sewing machine.
I also machine zig zagged the snowmens' eyes, nose and arms as Lori had suggested. When I made that first label, I hand embroidered those features.
I couldn't resist closeups of the houses.
Don't you just love all the snow and other details.
Which house would you pick?
I loved them all with the decorated trees and cheerful lit windows.
One more for the fireplace!
