Christmas Joy – Finished!

Earlier I wrote a couple of posts on the quiltalong I was participating in during this past year.  Linda Thielfoldt of the Quilted Goose hosted the Christmas Joy quiltalong, releasing a few blocks each month.  Sashing and layout instructions were released in September and October.  After all the craziness in my teaching schedule in October, I finally got to sit down and complete the quilt top.

I managed to sew all the blocks completely from my stash, making it completely scrappy.  I repeated only 1 fabric!  I’m not normally a scrappy quilter, so this was quite the accomplishment for me.  The only fabric I bought was the red sashing, because I didn’t have a dark enough red in my stash.

Here’s the top as designed by Linda:

I really like how this top came out.  But after seeing quilts from others in the quiltalong group, I decided it needed another border with some sort of focal fabric to pull it together.  O.k., I lied, I also bought the border fabric because I didn’t have what I needed.  Here’s the top with a red border with green holly leaves:

The top turned out to be about 60″ x 80″.  The holly border looks really busy in the photo, but it’s actually very pretty in person.  Now it’s off to the longarmer!

Thanks so much, Linda Thielfoldt, for bringing joy to this dreary year.  Now I finally have a Christmas quilt of my own.  Christmas Joy – Finished!