2022 Christmas Countdown - Holiday Patchwork Forest

 Day 13 of my Christmas Countdown and it's my Holiday Patchwork Forest quilt. 

This quilt still makes me smile because it started out as just a few test blocks from scraps in my stash.  I didn't have an overall colour plan before I started, but I really like how it's turned out.  

I did some basic machine quilting on it, but then accentuated the trees with hand quilting. Both Kaffe Fassett borders were from my stash, and the thin red strip border adds a finishing Christmas touch. 

It's another small lap type quilt that I can drape over a chair or table at Christmas.  

I used a pattern from Amy Smart of Diary of a Quilter.  She has a lot of Christmas quilt patterns on her blog.   

Green Diamonds

I've decided that I'm tired of walking past this quilt every day, so it's time to finish it.  

I did have grand plans to use this quilt as a hand quilting sampler, but I really don't like hand quilting through cotton batting.

I prefer to use wool batting when I'm hand quilting, but I must have had a piece of cotton batting lying around that fitted perfectly, so I used cotton batting this time.

I can see that pieces of the batting are pulling through with my stitches when I'm using the thicker threads like Perle 8 and Aurifil 12wt.  And I don't want wispy white bits of batting on the surface of my quilt.  

So I unpicked the small bit of hand quilting I'd done on the borders, and last weekend I just did four straight rows of machine quilting with my walking foot.  They're barely visible, but I needed some quilting on the borders, and it was the borders that were preventing me from finishing this quilt. 

There's still a bit more hand quilting to do in the middle, but it should be finished in a few weeks now. I'll be sure to show you the whole quilt when it's finished.  It's just a small one - lap sized.  

I actually started this quilt in a class with Kaffe and Brandon back in January 2018.  My end result is going to be quite different from where I started out. You can read an earlier post about it here.  

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below.

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