Hopeful Homemaker

My frantic efforts to finish up Christmas quilts continue.  I haven’t quite reached my goal of a month with a festive Christmas quilt at the foot of each bed, but I’m really hoping to finish them this year so I can enjoy them next year.  I keep saying this is my gift to my 2020 self.  I made my Christmas Color Stack quilt top last year, and now it’s a finished quilt!


I still love the colors in this one.  It’s a mash-up of all the reds, greens, pinks and plenty of blues with a few oranges thrown in for good measure.  Definitely not my most traditional Christmas quilt, but lots of fun.


I decided to be brave with my quilting, and with thread color.  The bright red thread blends well in some spots and sticks out in others.  I quilted long feathers in each row, going opposite directions from one row to the next.  It felt a little tedious when I was quilting it, but the more I look at it now, the more I like it.


In the skinny rows I did a smaller pattern and it worked well.


Overall the texture is great and we will enjoy this quilt for many years, I hope!


I used the same Alexander Henry nutcracker print on the back that I used in the inserted strips on the front.  This print was the original inspiration behind putting ALL the colors in the quilt top.  I made a scrappy binding for this one.  It is finished by machine to save me time in an already crazy week.

My Christmas Color Stack Quilt is made using my Color Stack Pattern .  I added measurements for the inset strip in my post about the quilt top .  It’s a fun pattern that is easy to make!

I can’t seem to pick a favorite Christmas color scheme.  I like the traditional red and pine green, and I like jewel tones that bring in blues and hot pink.  Silver, gold and white?  Yes, I like that too.  But when I see candy colors and pastels added to the mix, I always smile.  This Peppermint Quilt makes me smile.


You may remember the peppermint version of my Anthem Quilt pattern .  I made this quilt top last year and finally quilted it.  I’m making progress on quilting all my Christmas quilt tops this year, and I have a few more yet to start.  (My Giant Hunter’s Star and Supergiant Hunter’s Star holiday quilts were finished last week, hooray!)


I decided to be brave in my quilting.  The red swirls in the stars continue the peppermint theme and create movement.  I practiced drawing these on scratch paper before I tried quilting them.

In the green background I used a green thread and quilted holly leaves.  Each holly leaf is half of each background color and I like how it looks.


The holly leaves almost look like snowflakes.  It was fun to try something new with my quilting and have it work!  I finished by quilting around the outline of each star.


I saved this “ho ho ho” sheet for years to use as a backing for a holiday quilt.  The minty green is the perfect color for my peppermint quilt.  The quilting looks pretty from the back, too.  (Relief!)


One thing I love about quilting is the way a pattern can look completely different, and it’s just a matter of fabric and color choice.  I still love my original Anthem Quilt with the red, white and blue stars, but a two color background and pink/red stars completely changes the final look.