The Family Christmas Quilt

Well, the Patriotic Family quilt was so successful, my cousin decided we needed to do one for Christmas. This time, however, we only had 9 participants so 3 people agreed to make two different squares. We each made 9 blocks of the same pattern and sent them to my cousin, who divided them up and sent 12 out to each participant.

I decided to try some paper piecing this time and searched the internet for a tree. I found one here and tried it with some scrap material laying around.

It ended up being too long and narrow for my tastes, and I wasn't interested in doing all the work that went into the tree skirt on the original pattern. We were required to make 12 1/2" x 12 1/2" blocks. I ended up scanning the picture and stretching the image fat to make the following square.

The pattern (12 1/2" x 12 1/2" was too big to print on one sheet of copy paper on my printer at home, so I ended up printing it in thirds and taping it together. I definitely recommend using a shortened stitch length when paper piecing to ease in the tearing off of the paper at the end. Here are several of the squares laid out together.

This time we didn't embroider the names on the squares, but my cousin provided a listing printed on fabric of all the squares we could sew to the backs of our quilts.

Here are the squares I received laid out in a pattern on the floor.

I was the only one who used the "blue"...ooops.

I sashed my squares in alternating green and cream fabric and finished with a striped border that I mitered in the corners. (A very tricky technique to get them to match up just right).

The quilt is at the long-arm quilter's house being done in a tannenbaum pattern. I should get it back some time in February.

Here is a photo of my dad's quilt top before quilting.

My uncle finished his quilt and binding first.

My cousin Sandi (the leader of this project) did her quilt with a tree border and a snowflake quilting. She must have been in the long arm quilter's queue early because she was able to get her quilt back before Christmas and enjoy it in 2010. I will have to wait until next December to display mine.

Carolyn "Care Bear" King