Christmas Quilt Tops Are Now Completed

So I feel pretty good about these two Christmas quilt tops. Yeah, yeah, the holidays are over. I get that. But in my world, finishing these two tops now means I'm that much closer to having completed Christmas quilts by next season. Yay!

Christmas Stars a completed quilt top!

This background fabric was the only red fabric that I had any serious yardage of and truly, I had my doubts about how well it would work. Normally I would choose out a cheery red for a holiday look and this is more of a tomato red with, if you look closely, a gray smudgy texture to it. Nevertheless, I plowed ahead, being picky about the star fabrics, and ended up with something I really love. This particular fabric {a Basic Grey fabric I had bought on clearance for the backing of another quilt}, surprisingly ended up giving this quilt a wonderful velvety look. How cool that my 'make-do' choice successfully amped up the holiday vibe too. Could never have planned it so well!

Approx. 67" x 80 1/2"

As you know, I had also challenged myself to include some of those older, less promising greens in the quilts too.  These greens did not look very attractive directly next to the background red, but in a loosely stacked grouping of fabrics looked just fine. Ughh. What to do? Telling myself, 'This will work! Cross your fingers, this IS going to work', I went ahead and cut out the flying geese for the border regardless of any internal misgivings.

Flying Geese border

Piecing the flying geese only further deepened my suspicions that the borders were going to be a total waste of time, a disaster in the making. The colors were just too cringy together and what in the world was I thinking??  But you know me, never give up! And later I was so very happy with that optimism. This border really adds to the depth of this particular quilt. If I had given in to all the doubt and went with perfectly matched greens, the quilt would have looked sweet, perhaps?, but very, very dull. This way, it has a great spark.*whew!

Happy with the Christmas look to this one!

Looking at the inspiration picture below {an antique quilt shown in the June 2011 American Patchwork and Quilting magazine}, you can probably see why I first thought that the lighter greens could potentially work for the pieced border. While the original maker used more of a khaki color, all that is required really, would be a color that would sharply contrast with the red background without competing with the much more interesting star center of the quilt. A rich mustard color might work too, it's hard to say. What I do know NOW, is that overly matching colors in the border would have blended a little too well with the inside stars and thus reduced the impact of that wonderful 'framing'. Something to think about if you're wanting to make this quilt for yourself! Basic directions for fabric/ cutting are at the end of this post. *Not included in those directions are the outside red border lengths, of which I'm sure many of you can determine sizing according to personal taste.

Christmas Stars inspiration pic

The second Christmas quilt is a very simple design. The inspiration came after combing through my Pinterest boards in search of something super easy. The design maybe doesn't present quite as sharp looking, sewn in printed fabrics instead of the solids in the original, but it perfectly suited my needs.

The 2nd Christmas quilt

Between the flying geese border in the previous quilt, these 6" hourglass blocks, and a pieced backing, I am making very good progress with using up many of these old fabrics. With the flying geese, all the greens used ended up being light green to very light greens, with the exception of the darker star tips. The greens in these hourglass blocks are a slightly stronger value mix as I thought this quilt needed the interest more. The goal being to get rid of this particular range of colors in the stash totes, in each quilt made, the selection was purposefully limited. I cut till each individual fabric was exhausted, before moving on to the next. All scraps were then dumped into the scrap bin where they may or may not be used some day in the future. We'll cross that bridge when we get there!

Lots of older, tired green fabrics used

As you can see, several green fabrics feature pink flowers. Why toss them? I'm never afraid to blend pink and red in any quilt and in fact, love the surprise of an unexpected fabric choice in scrap quilts. I will say that I was a little dubious about the need for a completely different colored border, but went with it because the theme for this was supposed to be 'Christmas'. Adding red should make that a little more obvious. Okey dokey! Whatever the quilt needs!

As it turned out, adding the red makes all the difference in the world as to how interesting this quilt looks. Why, you ask? Well, before the border addition, the green and cream acted a bit bland. Now the contrasting red gives the lighter greens an excuse to perk up significantly against the creamy white background. It just looks more playful. It's really hard to describe, but trust me. That's exactly what happened. With the bold Christmas floral that will be used for the backing, I'm thrilled with the overall holiday vibe this quilt exudes, albeit in a very serene way! And so easy to make. Do not regret this squirrel at all!

A make-do pieced border

If you look at the border in the picture above, you can see that I had to piece the red border with different fabrics. I loved this leftover red/brown polka dot print, but did not have nearly enough. No worries. We'll make it work! And for a seasonal holiday throw quilt, who really cares?

Approx. 55" x 61"

Sewing together hourglass blocks is not my favorite thing to do in the world, so much bunching at the seam in the center. It's been years since I made anything similar, but this time I remembered to iron by picking the iron up and then setting it back down, not attempting to maul the quilt into submission. Mostly it went fine, but any and all rumples are absolutely maker 'error'!

Very sweet looking quilt....

So that wraps up the two main Christmas quilts I started during the first part of December. Because the design was already predetermined, the work went very quickly. So glad to put them behind me and move on to other projects, but even more, I'm absolutely delighted to have found a good use for these older, tired looking fabrics. It's looking like a positive challenge so far, but I'm expecting to get bogged down at some point. Probably when I have to address the orange fabrics! Ha! Don't even want to go there!

Two more quilts are cut out that could possibly be used during the holiday season, but I don't consider them exclusively 'Christmas' quilts. That should make them easy to work on moving forward. They too have a little bit of these 'So Tired' fabrics, but unfortunately not enough to make a huge difference to the stack. As I have said before though, there's no point in making ugly quilts just to feel good about being frugal and in fact, I have completely tossed two completely worthless fabrics. Not even good enough for backing! It's been a very good time for working to 'finish up' projects. This time of year definitely tends to bring that out in me. There's a couple other projects that have been languishing for entirely too long and maybe now is the time to get them out of the way as well? We'll see how long the energy lasts. Linking up to Wendy's Peacock Party.