I’m excited to announce my brand new patterns

& a new template too.

You know how much I love to sew for Christmas.

Well, these are all Christmas, all the time!

My favorite is my brand new sampler Christmas Greetings.

Like my A Merry Christmas to You pattern,

this pattern can be made into either 5 small quilts for you

or as gifts for 5 of your friends

or

after making the 5 small quilts

you can sew them together into 1 larger quilt

then add a couple small borders

to make 1 awesome wall or table quilt for Christmas.

I enjoyed using my new Brightpad to trace

the letters for the perle cotton embroidery.

There are a handful of Tiny Dresden plates and partial plates involved.

I love using 2 different fabrics for each plate to add interest.

Just remember to always have the same fabric petal on top

when you sew the pairs together.

After the first seam the fabrics will automatically alternate.

I made 2 sets of everything

so I could photograph both versions for the cover

but you’ll only need to make 1.

Fusible web appliqué makes the letters quick.

I tried out my new Tiny Tree Template Set!!!

I LOVE how easy & accurate cutting around my brand new

plastic templates make these trees!

(I also love my “new” tiny cupboard that I found

on black Friday when my sister, Lori, & I were antique shopping!)

These 2 trees were just for fun.

Beware!

I’ll for sure be designing many more patterns with these!

In no time I had a perfect stack of trees.

The hardest part of most of the blocks was deciding the fabrics!

I used a lot of Sweetwater’s new Christmas line,

The Christmas Card.

I noticed today that The Fat Quarter Shop now has it available.

I also used some of Jo Morton’s new line, Glad Tidings

plus I used several more reds & background fabrics.

Displaying them on my antique laundry basket helps me see them all at once.

It all started so MUCH tidier that this!

Key to the scrappy effect of these quilts is spacing out the fabrics.

Be sure to use a variety of fabrics in each type of block

so they will flow across the quilt &

not be sitting right next to each other

& fade one block into the next.

See what I mean?

I tried to not put any of the same background fabric side by side with itself.

If this happens it can change the design of the blocks.

I wish I’d taken more pics of the assembly,

but I was so busy working that I forgot!

Aren’t these 3″ spool blocks cute?

Keeping track of scraps that can be used in other blocks can save fabric.

This is really important when I’m working with sample fabric

before it’s available in quilt shops.

I also kept close tabs on the quantity of blocks

that I needed to make for 2 sets of the quilts.

Anyone else find it annoying to find you’ve only made 17

blocks when you need 18?

Or when you KNOW you made enough blocks but you have no idea where they went?

I was obviously interrupted when I was

working on the spool blocks.

I almost started cutting more fabric but then decided to take a trip

to the kitchen for a drink or snack & spotted them!

Notice the tool on the counter right beside them???

I don’t remember now what I was asked to help with

but it certainly broke my train of thought!

Who needs any more excuses for mistakes

when working with so many moving parts x 2? lol

The Big Board was great help in pressing the

completed top before adding the borders

but the biggest help I promise you is Mary Ellen’s Best Press!

Next came the half-square triangles.

They’re a snap when you use Thangles.

So much fun!

My generous tester, Chris, made her quilts into the 1 large quilt.

She mentioned that when I do this as a quilt-along here

that she wouldn’t mind making the 5 smaller quilts version.

So, what do you think?

Are you in for another quilt-along?

You can find Christmas Greetings on my brand new website here!

Look for more new patterns there too

and also here in the coming days.

Just Keep Sewing…

Susan