I Love It When A Plan Comes Together

When I first saw Lee's {Freshly Pieced} post about her Fair Isle Quilt pattern I knew I wanted to make it. I have a hard time choosing colors for a quilt but this time I immediately thought of using a black background and making the reindeer look like Rudolph. I used Lee's photo and loaded it into PhotoShop Elements and then did a rough draft and changed the colors using the color picker tool.

The finished quilt makes me so happy. The colors seem to glow with that black background. It turned out exactly like I wanted it to look, even though the making of the quilt gave me a few headaches.

I really struggle with getting a perfect 1/4" seam. I have used every trick in the book and still I ended up with uneven sized blocks and reindeer that look like they have arthritic knees.

Once the blocks were all sewn together and sashed, my quilt was not perfectly square but the quilting helped to make it look more symmetrical. I could have quilted it myself, because in the end I just had my long arm quilter use wavy lines spaced 1" apart. I also wanted to try wool batting and I am sold on it. It is so warm but yet light weight and gives a lovely, squishy, cozy feeling to the quilt. I have been sleeping with it every night since I finished it last week.

The backing fabric is a perfect compliment and the black 1/2" binding keeps your eye on the beautiful colors and doesn't distract from Lee's design.

This quilt needed a special label.Come back tomorrow and I'll tell you all about the label I made for this quilt.

The best part of finishing a Christmas quilt at Christmas time is being able to get some photos by the tree.

Rudolph and Santa feel nice and cozy with the quilt, too.

This last photo was made using several photo editing apps on the iPhone 6.

Quilt Stats:
Name: Midnight Christmas Fabrics used: Michael Miller Cotton Couture Solids in Black, Cranberry, Lipstick, Cappuccino and Turf Batting: Hobb's Heirloom Washable Wool Backing: Chalkboard Christmas Snowflakes Multi by Basic Grey Thread: Pieced with Aurifil Black #2692 Quilting: by Susie Peterson with Perma Core Cranberry Thread Finished Size: 70" x 73" after washing.