Another holiday quilt

I wanted to make the Christmas tree panel quilt next. I have it on my design wall so I have a Christmas tree in my sewing room.

Once again, I wanted to make it reversible. I knew I could piece a heart with Log Cabin blocks. I used EQ7 to determine the size of blocks I needed to piece a backing for the tree panel. With Log Cabin blocks, the logs would have to be 1″. I didn’t want to piddle with that. Then I remembered the Storm at Sea blocks can make a heart also.

I went through the totes again and picked out some Banyan Batiks leftovers and measured and estimated, deciding I had enough to make the blocks I needed.

I needed the small blocks to finish at 4″ and the large at 8″. I got out Deb Tucker’s Studio180 Square Squared ruler and the Stacked Squares Technique Sheet. I worked backwards from a finished 4″ block to know where to start. I sewed away. Hmmm, this isn’t big enough, so I added another round to get where I wanted to be. Did the same with the 8″ finished block and once again had to add another round to be the right size. (This was only the second time I used the ruler and technique sheet.) Then I got out the V-Block ruler and made all those blocks I needed. Then it was time to put them together.

Oh no! My V-blocks were 4″ CUT, not finished. (I think those two V-blocks are wrong, they aren’t in the finished quilt at all, they should be joined at the wide part not the points.)

Since I was using leftover fabric, I didn’t have enough to redo the too-small blocks or the too-big blocks. I didn’t want to quit, I wanted to get that Christmas tree up!! I chalked lines to see what I’d have by cutting down the square-in-a-square blocks. I didn’t want to cut them down. I didn’t want to scrap the idea.

So. I took a deep breath…and trimmed down the too-big blocks. I survived it. And I’m okay with the results. It’s not perfect, but it looks like a heart and that’s what I was going for.

As you can see, I was running out of fabric, I had to add a darker fabric to the top and bottom to get the size I needed.

When it came time to layer for quilting, I marked the center on all four sides of both the pieced heart and the panel. I had made the heart side larger than the panel. I taped it to the table. The batting I had cut just slightly larger than the tree panel. I centered the batting on the wrong side of the heart, then placed the tree right side up on the batting, matching the pins on all four sides of the heart and panel.

I quilted it with the large serpentine stitch, using the walking foot. Again, I went diagonally. I really do need to come up with some other ways of quilting! I like it though…

For now, I have my sewing room Christmas tree!