Christmas in July

Check out my tutorial on how to make this quilt on one of my favorite fabric designer's blogs: Ann Kelle.  This quilt was a lot of fun to make and the pattern I created yielded a fair amount of scraps.  In this post, I will show you what I did with all of those yummy leftovers.

Making a Christmas stocking for our family's newest edition was a no-brainer.  Using 2.5" squares, I created a youthful patchwork design and hand-embroidered her name on the cuff. 

I created a simple design on the back, using some Kona Cotton Clover and more Jingle.

Finally, I was thrilled to make a Christmas tree skirt to replace our family's TJ-Maxx special we'd purchased right after we were married.  I made teeny dresden plates with Kona solids that match the Jingle line (Red, Rich Red, Chartreuse, Bubblegum Pink, and Clover) and centered a Jingle print in each of the 16 plates.

I hand appliqued the plates and circles to the quilted tree skirt.  It actually didn't take as long as I thought it would and it looks a lot better than machine stitching.

I used my old tree skirt as a makeshift pattern for the shape of the tree skirt after I had quilted a large whole-cloth quilt on my machine.  I bound the skirt in bias binding and used buttons and hair elastics to make the skirt be able to open and close.

Thanks so much to Kelle for letting me play with her Jingle fabrics.  I had so much fun making all of these items and look forward to using them this Christmas season and many more years to come!