Christmas in July

The weather this July has been quite off this year.  Usually in NC, we bake under 90°-100° temps while begging for a bit of rain to cool things down for a few minutes.  This year, we've had temps in the uppers 70s and low 80s with rain every day for weeks on end! I guess it seems only fitting, in light of the odd weather, to be working on a Christmas quilt.

For a couple of years now, I've thought that it would be fun to have a quilt that we just pulled out at Christmas-time, to snuggle under on those chilly evenings. I didn't want it to look too Christmasy though because I might want to leave it out into January. When I found this set of fat quarters on Etsy in the Cherry Christmas line by Aneela Hoey for Moda, with it's combo of red, green, aqua, and grey, but no Santa Clauses or Christmas trees, it seemed like a perfect fit.  As an added bonus, it's from the 2012 line, thus discounted, and it has little clotheslines of woolens hanging between the winter trees. *love*

The pattern I chose is the Snuggly Bricks quilt, a tutorial I found on Pinterest. It holds the perfect amount of visual interest without taking forever to cut and piece. I did make my quilt 6 bricks wide and 10 bricks long since I had 16 fat quarters instead of the 12 she recommends. I still have 1 fat quarter and the scraps of the others remaining; I might attempt a matching quilted throw pillow at some point in the future.

This quilt marks my first attempt at hand quilting, something I've always wanted to try, but never had the nerve to tackle. I used one of those PVC pipe-style frames, and it took about 2 weeks to do the hand quilting. I definitely gained a new appreciation for the antique quilts I've seen!

For the backing, I decided to try to find a flannel sheet that would match. I actually found a set of twin flannel sheets in this gray herringbone (that's difficult to see unless you are close to the fabric) on clearance for $8! I used the fitted sheet, which was JUST big enough, for the backing, and I'm saving the flat sheet for another project.

For the binding, I left 2 inches of flannel sheet on each side of the quilt, which I trimmed to about 1.5 inches just before sewing the binding. I folded it twice and sewed a zigzag stitch all the way around.

Overall, I'm thrilled with how this quilt turned out. I really like the Cherry Christmas line; I love the warm snuggly flannel; the hand-quilting looks nice; and now it's just ready and waiting for Christmas snuggles!

Finn has been trying for a couple of weeks now to snuggle under this quilt, finished or not. He couldn't have been more pleased to finally have the go ahead for full snuggling!