Made in a Flurry Christmas Quilt

I had a charm pack and a jelly roll from Flurry, by Kate Spain.  I wanted to use my fabric efficiently, have a lap quilt size final product and be able to whip it up quickly, so it would be done by Christmas.  I framed out each charm square with one strip from the jelly roll.  This is where things should have matched up perfectly.  The packaging said each had 42 squares, only when I got to the end, I had 2 extra charm squares for a total of 43.  So not only did I have an extra charm square, but I was short one jelly roll strip.  It all worked out in the end.

Doing the math, I realized I could make a lap quilt that was 7 x 7 blocks, if I could come up with 6 more blocks.  I chose to do plain white blocks for the extras, so I could use up another idea for Christmas crafting that I wasn't going to be able to do otherwise.  I have ton of cute Christmas embroidery patterns, so I stitched those up on my extra white squares.  It turned out beautifully, except that my embroidery machine became possessed immediately upon starting the project.  I basted the assembled quilt top to the batting, to use the batting as stabilizer.  Every single square I thought would ruin the quilt, and I'd have to take the whole thing apart and start from scratch.  It worked out ok, in the end, but it was stressful.

I just loved this fabric.  It was more like a heavy voile, than a quilt cotton.  It was unbelievably soft.  This quilt ended up being a generous 61 inches on a side, which is great for snuggling under.

On the back I used a big piece of Alexander Henry novelty fabric with Santa and the reindeer hanging out at the beach.  I forget where I got it, but it reminds me of Christmas in San Diego and I had to have it, even though I didn't have any idea what I would do with it.  As soon as I saw the blues in Flurry, I knew it would be a perfect match for the backing.

I added some chunks of coordinating, but non Christmas fabric to bring the back up to size.  The blue and the red are Grunge by Basic Grey.  I love the whole Grunge line of blenders.  The green on the right is a dark green on green pokka dot from Connecting threads.  It is also really silky.  If you haven't checked out Connecting Threads, do it.  Their fabric ranges from decent to great and the a lot of it can be found on sale for $2-3 a yard.

I'm happy to report that this quilt is yummy and warm.  It is keeping me warm right now.  Have a Merry Christmas filled with love and laughter and quilts.