Snow Day

Several years ago, I bought some Kate Spain Christmas fabric to make some little Christmas gifts as well as make some dessert napkins to use for our annual holiday party.  I ended up with a bit of yardage left over but no clue what to do with it.

Then, enter Rachel from P.S. I Quilt.  She shared her Synchronized Squares quilt – in Kate Spain fabrics no less – and I was smitten.  Of course by that time a new Christmas line had been released, so I ordered a couple of charm packs.

This quilt really was a joy to make.  I can’t get enough of Kate’s Christmas fabric (well, any of her fabric, if I’m being honest) and as you can see all her lines play so well together.

I shared the finished quilt top back in February of 2013, but it took me over a year to finally get around to quilting it.  I bought the backing fabric for it last Christmas.  I completely and utterly fell in love with these hot cocoa mug with marshmallows from her latest line.  Using this for my backing was a no-brainer!

I decided to go ahead and quilt this one myself, on my machine.  And luckily, since I was doing just straight line quilting it wasn’t too bad to wrestle.  I finished the quilting back in July and decided to use yet another of her Christmas lines (yes, we’re up to four now) for the binding.  How could I resist those little Christmas trees?!?  You may remember that fabric from some stitching wallets I made back in 2012.

Everything finally came together and I finished sewing on the binding in August of this year.  I like to name my quilts and I’d been calling this one the “Kate Spain quilt” forever.  When I was quilting it though, its name finally came to me.  So, may I present….

…Snow Day!

I am so so happy with it, I really am.  The colors and the prints and the pattern just make me smile every time I see it.

And the red binding was a perfect choice, if I do say so myself!

As I said, I did some straight line quilting on this one – on the diagonal.  I’d originally intended to cross-hatch it, but I thought that the diagonal quilting in one direction looked a bit like a candy cane.

And seriously, are those cups of cocoa on that icicle grey background not the cutest?!?  It even has a label (which makes it “official” in my book), made from the snowball fabric I used on the inside of those stitching wallets.

This one was a labor of love, and maybe a record of Christmases past and a promise of Christmases to come spent snuggling under a warm quilt.

I am grateful for snow days, cups of cocoa, and the joy of Christmas.  Merry Christmas to all!