Magical Winterland patchwork quilt

Hello quilting friends! This weekend I wanted to pop in and wish you all a Merry Christmas and a blessed 2025! Thank you for your continued support, encouragement and enthusiasm this past year. The quilting community is definitely a light in the world, and I feel the warmth of that light through all of you. I have one last quilt finish to share for 2024, a simple patchwork quilt that makes my heart smile. I hope it makes you smile too.

The simplest quilts often become our favorites. It usually happens when the fabric is particularly special to us, when it stirs something nostalgic or meaningful within us. That’s how I felt when I came across fat quarters of Lisa Audit’s Magical Winterland fabric.

The outdoor Christmas scenes stir up memories we made when my children were little . . . memories of ice skating, building snowmen, sledding, skiing, snowmobiling and cutting down the family Christmas tree. Precious memories of happy family moments that surely also included moments of crying or crankiness or discontentment. But love has a way of covering hurts and sadness, so that we are eventually left with the light. Isn’t it wonderful?

The scenes in Magical Winterland were so precious, I decided to make the most of my fat quarters by cutting large rectangles (4 ½” x 10 ½”). I selected several prints from Lisa’s collection and supplemented with some blues, greens and whites from my stash. (You may be able to spy prints from Sweetwater, Primitive Gatherings, Tilda and Deb Strain.)  Altogether I cut 108 rectangles and laid them out in 18 rows, with 6 rectangles per row.  The finished quilt top was 60” x 72”.

The ever talented and kind Katy at Woods Edge Quilting somehow squeezed me into her lineup in November to work her magic on my quilt top. She used a panto called Loopy Snowflakes, which was the perfect finishing touch to this sweet quilt. When Katy sent this simple quilt back to me, she said it was one of her all-time favorites. I think she and I are cut from the same quilting cloth!

When I finished my quilt top, I had enough scraps left over to fussy cut a few images and sew up some economy blocks. I used Moda’s Indigo Chambray and two Tilda wovens to frame the feature prints. I’m not sure what these blocks will become (a pillow or something bigger), but I was so tickled with how they turned out that I zipped over to my local quilt shop (Sweetwater Cotton Shop) and purchased another yard. Hey, a girl has to be prepared!

As a small measure of my gratitude for your kind support, I have put my Etsy shop on a 20% sale, today through January 2, 2025. Thank you! Merry Christmas from my family to yours!

Taunja