Better late than never?

On the Friday after Thanksgiving, I start decorating for Christmas. I always bring out all of my Christmas books, and read them... or at least flip through them. On that I do always manage to read is "The Little Book of Christmas Joys" because it's one of those little books with like two sentences per page, full of cheerful ideas about how to spend the holidays in the most meaningful fashion.


I am a complete sucker for this kind of thing btw.


I love traditions, however lame they might be. As much as I rolled my eyes and pretended to be annoyed. I did actually enjoy it when J. would point out the place where she took her GRE (EVERY.SINGLE.TIME.WE.DROVE.BY.)... because it was our little tradition.


Anyway, one of the cheerful ideas was to "Sleep under a homemade quilt on Christmas Eve." and I got it in my head that I really wanted a special Christmas quilt that I could use on Christmas Eve. (Never mind the fact that I sleep under a homemade quilt *every* night...that's a summer quilt so it doesn't count) As it was still late November, early December when I got this idea, I figured it would be no problem to do a quick & easy quilt and have it done in time.





I started well. I already had some holiday appropriate flannels in my stash.

OK... they're not super traditional Christmassy fabrics... but it's Santa, and flannels that match Santa.

As I was on a tight time-line, I decided to just go with big squares and a relatively simple plan. Not a great plan... but a basic three-color fairly symmetrical pattern. I got as far as cutting them all out, and sewing them together in strips. But the three flannels are of widely differing textures. The red is really soft and flowy, no structure at all- think Grandpa's favorite shirt, the Santa flannel is a medium weight- like new PJs, and the blue is very stiff- I could hold up a block and it would keep it's shape, not flop over. Yeah, I *could* have pre-washed them, but time was of the essence.

Except that time didn't turn out to be *that* essential, because I went on my Christmas trip home in early December. When I got back I looked at my Quick & Easy quilt and realized.... this quilt sucks. Ok... maybe sucks is a bit strong... but it just didn't inspire me... so I set it aside.

Well, this weekend I did some cleaning (a LOT of cleaning actually), and when organizing some of my crafty stuff, I saw the pile of fabric for this quilt and decided, what the heck - I'll just finish it up.

Here is the quilt top.

What you can't see in this picture is that the red fabric has a grid pattern on it... but due to the floppiness of the fabric I was completely unable to get it to line-up straight when cutting it. I've actually gotten as far as pinning the top, batting & backing together... and I've already done a couple of lines of quilting. As far as the design & execution of the quilt thus far, I'm not thrilled with it. But I'm going to finish it up. The fabric came entirely from my stash (and by stash I mean fabric I bought impulsively and then let languish in a closet not knowing what to do with it for several months... or years). Being flannel, the quilt will be very warm and cozy when finished, and I think that will trump it's other qualities.

Oh well... I'm determined to finish it up. It gets cold at night a flannel quilt would be cozy even if it's not especially pretty.