Sunday, December 04, 2005


This is a little Christmas quilt I made in 1996. At the time I was working for a grocery store. It burned down in Nov. 95 and took almost a year to get it rebuilt and reopened. Luckily they had insurance that paid the salaries of key employees. Again luckily I was considered a key employee! So I got an 11 month paid vacation. I'm betting THAT will never happen again. LOL!

Anyway, I got sidetracked from my story. As you can imagine when we opened back up just before Thanksgiving it was a very hectic time. I went weeks working from open to close without a day off. So of course no quilting was going on either. I was having serious withdrawals by the time I got a day off just before Christmas. At the time I had just started getting a monthly FQ medly from Foothill Fabrics. My first packet had come in a few days earlier and it had this neat block print with snowmen and santas etc. in PURPLE! Now to me Christmas colors have always been red and green and here was this purple fabric that was representing itself as Christmas. Also in the packet were a green, a red, a purple, and a tan. I needed to sew something or I was going to go nuts so I decided I'd give it a try. There was just enough of the block print to cut it into 9 squares with 4 blocks per square. I used the tan as the background and the red, green and purple to put star points on the blocks. I didn't have enough of the tan to use as the whole background so I added a very similar piece from my stash to finish it out and to use as the border. I also pulled another similar purple from my stash to use as the narrow purple border since I didn't have enough of the packet fabric for that either. And I LOVE it! I kept getting her packets each month for almost 2 years and they all made me stretch my comfort level in some way. Since then I've learned to be more bold in my fabric choices but I'm not sure without ever having gotten started in her Packet of the Month Club I would have ever branched out into the bolder prints and color I now love.

I still love this little quilt and think I'll go dig it out of it's tote and hang it on my wall at work during the holidays.

4 comments:

Laurie said...

Nancy,
That is so cute! I LOVE it! Thanks for sharing!
Laurie

Finn said...

Hi Nancy, what a super neat quilt that is...and I love hearing the story of how it came to be. Wow .. an 11 month vacation..must have been heaven!

The quilt looks like such a happy quilt..glad you will be getting it out for the holidays..*S* It is good when something like those packets make you stretch yourself/

Bonnie K. Hunter said...

Very cute! I'm drawn more to the unusual christmas fabrics than I am the traditional red and green!

Bonnie

Granny said...

Who wouldn't love an 11 month paid vacation! That's a neat quilt with a nice story to go with it. I see why you like it!

Judy L.