holiday quilt – Monday Morning Designs

My latest quilt pattern is here! Holiday Hemlocks is available for purchase in my Etsy shop. This one was difficult to keep secret so I’m happy to finally share it with everyone. 🙂

The idea came to me in June and after the long process of designing, tweaking, making one, sending it out to testers, taking photos, etc.— keeping everything under wraps was tough! Plus, it’s the first throw size holiday pattern I’ve designed which made it pretty exciting.

Here’s some information about the quilt…it measures 56″ x 66″ and the pattern is a PDF download with detailed instructions and plenty of colorful diagrams. I would rate it easy enough for an advanced beginner. The best news is that it’s still August and the holidays are months away so you have plenty of time to whip one up. And I think you’ll agree with me on how fun it is to see this come together.

I made mine using traditional colors, but I think it would look great in non-traditional colors, too. How about teal trees and silver stars…

If you love scrappy quilts (as we quilters do) I have a scrappy version coming soon, so be on the look out for it if you want to use up some stash.

I hope you enjoy this pattern as much as I do! Happy holiday sewing. 🙂

I’ve always wanted to make an Irish Chain quilt, so I finally did. I just love their simplicity. Earlier this year I purchased fabric for a Christmas tree mini quilt pattern, Wee Three Trees, and since it didn’t require a lot of fabric, I luckily had enough left for an entire quilt, scrappy binding included!

Greetings by Kaye England for Wilmington Prints

I definitely prefer traditional red and green Christmas colors and this fabric was a perfect choice as it offered peppermints, poinsettias, old-fashioned toy tops and letters to Santa for some old-style fun.

I started piecing this in May and finished in August which seems like it took me a long time, but I made a couple of other quilts in between, and overall, it went together relatively quick. I used precut 2 ½” strips so I was able to strip piece and chain piece the nine patch blocks.

The background fabric is Kona Cotton Snow, which blended nicely with the light colors in the printed fabric. For quilting, I went with my ever-so-popular (and quite possibly ‘overdone’) crosshatch. I made my marks using a hera marker and as usual, it took a lot of time from start to finish.

I thought the crosshatch would give the plain blocks some texture and I quilted my lines 1 ½” apart. I’m pretty happy with the results! It’s also a generous size, finishing at 64 ½” x 76 ½”.