Christmas Joy

A little while back I received a beautiful charm pack of Kate Spain's Joy fabrics and another of Moda Bella white charms as a gift from a special friend.  These fabrics are just so sweet - red, green and duck egg hues with fairy lights, Chritsmas trees, snowflakes, snowflurries and teeny weeny doves.  What's not to love?

I have always wanted to make myself a Christmas quilt but never quite got around to devoting the fabrics or the time to one.  Well, with two charm packs very handily at my disposal I now have every excuse to indulge in a little festive quilt-making!

I hated the idea of chopping up these charms and reducing the effects of the fun, bright designs so I left them alone, alternated them with the white charms and pieced together this crisp loveliness -

When I came to quilting it, I opted for simple outlining on each side of the seams

and now that lovely piece of zigzag Joy fabric

that arrived at the end of last week is just waiting to become the binding on my wee Christmas quilt.  I can't wait to get it cut and stitched on so I can show it off to you all.

Aren't pressies from good friends great?!

Too many choices

Ever have trouble deciding which pattern to try out next?

I mentioned recently that I have another gift quilt to make for another aunt (yes, I come from a large extended family). I was hoping this book would be a good place to start in my search for a pattern as I've had the book for ages now but haven't made actually made anything from it yet.

Armed with my treasured Fandango Jelly Roll (I have hoarded this for over a year now) I sat down to decide.  But, I couldn't.  I love lots of these quilts but none of them just took my fancy for this quilt, with these fabrics and for this aunt.

Fantastic aquas, greens, corals, gold and rich browns in this Kate Spain Fandango Jelly Roll!

Then, I remembered having seen these amazing quilts by Fiona and Laura Jane a few months ago and after investigation and a quick online purchase I now have my Hopscotch pattern.

While the pattern is gorgeous, I was not so enamoured with the cutting (which I wasn't really planning on starting, but did anyway).  The templates were a bit skewed even though I changed the page to US letter format and set the scaling to 100%, and I ended up having to redraft more accurate ones myself.  It must be something to do with my computer or my printer or both, who knows?  So now I have more than just my fingers crossed that this will all work out well in the end!

All ready to piece together -

Sorry about the blur!

(And, in case you are feeling sorry for my overlooked Jelly Rolls pattern book I have another quilt in mind to make from it some time much later this year, possibly next.)