Christmas is coming!!

And I'm excited.

Pinterest is overflowing with DIY ideas and the twinkle lights have started to make an appearance in my street.  I seriously love this time of year. I love carols, and Christmas trees, and tinsel, and bad Christmas movies, and fairy lights, and wrapping presents, and Santa hats, and candy canes.... *sigh* I am looking forward to November being over so I can get out my decorations. 

So why am I posting about Christmas, if I'm not even decorating yet??  Because I have started on my Christmas joy. in the sewing room at least.

As you would see from my crazy WIP post, way down the end there was a plan for a Christmas quilt and Santa Sack.

I know this, being at the bottom of the list, was quite literally my lowest priority, but I wanted to get a little bit of Christmas going. So out came the pile of Santas and I got cutting.

 

I literally cut. And cut. And cut.

I also ironed.  A lot.

I don't have a whole lot to show for it. That photo on the right is the product of a whole days labour.

I really wanted to get started on my quilt.  I love Christmas and the idea of having a special Christmas quilt, makes my heart happy. I had a panel that I though would be the starting point, but I couldn't make anything go. Particularly as there were lots of panels and I had kind of imagined a messy blocktastic spree - a bit of a magic number scenario. But then reality came knocking and all these crazy different panels were actually significantly different in size, and the coordinating fabric I had was not working for me, and nothing was actually square (despite the ironing AND starching I did).  After several hours I abandoned all the fabric and tried graph paper.

I tried at least 8 different layouts, until I finally gave up the idea of incorporating all the different panels and came up with this as a plan.

I think I want to go low volume in the star sections and black/dark for the words.  I've got a panel to go in the middle and I've cut some strips of the patterned fabric to run off the sides.

I just want to make it clear that the little picture in the middle is a panel and I will be sewing around it.  This is not my actual  applique/paper piecing template for the centre :-)

I think it's pretty cute though. I mean, look! I even did a reindeer!!!!

I'm happy with the design.

I have no idea yet how I'm going to put it together, but I'm definitely happy with it.

Of course now my problem is, I have a whole bunch of panels that now I don't technically need. Maybe I could do two Christmas quilts??

E xx