Christmas quilts

Good morning friends,

It is early Friday morning and I am enjoying my coffee in quiet glow of the Christmas tree…

… and in good company of course – Charley and Tess are always by my side. ❤️

My eyes landed on the Christmas quilt… the oldest of my makes, the first quilt I completed actually. Way back in… 1996? I think.

Actually I made two of them, one red and one green

They are the same pattern, I just modified the red one and made the Square-in-square block for the star middle, instead of plain square.

There is a good and dear to me story behind these quilts.

Back in 1994 is when I discovered the world of quilting. It was only two years after I came to US with my family and I have never seen a quilt before that. I have been sewing since I was little girl, but no quilts. They really didn’t exist over there, in my mother country, Serbia (part of former Yugoslavia).

In 1994 my then colleagues and now my dearest and oldest friends here, Martha and Mary walked in the lab one day with this book, Quilter’s Complete Guide, by Marianne Fons and Liz Porter… (sound familiar? 😊)

Oooh I was so intrigued and smitten!! I had to get it ASAP, started reading it all, got some fabric and yes – those amazing tools, rotary cutter, mat and ruler… WOW!

Swing machine I got just before that, not for quilting, but because I realized I will be making Halloween costumes for a while! (my kids were used to having just what they wanted and imagined, not what’s in the stores… )

So at work, we had this small group of ladies that often had lunch together and when we showed them the book and some blocks – they were intrigued too. That was the start of a very dear and long friendship, many quilting trips together, endless lunch break chats and show-and-tells, even a few little quilt shows in the said lunch break space!!

Joanne, Anne, Bernadette, Mary, Martha and me became little group of quilters that have fun together and really good friends forever. Later on, two Colleens joined, one as a quilter and the other as our best cheering squad and companion. Oh how many great memories and stories I can tell you… such treasure.

Since then, we sadly lost Mary who passed away and everyone else retired, but me. We don’t have lunch breaks together any more, but we see each other at least twice a year and remain in touch.

Back to the Christmas quilts. As we all were beginners, we learned together a lot. I subscribed to American Patchwork & Quilting at that time (yes, just after they started too and I have been a subscriber ever since!) and in one issue there was this Christmas star quilt! Loved it at first sight. Pattern called for 24 different Christmas fabrics (you would only need a 7″x14″ rectangle of each). As always, I immediately showed it to my quilting buddies during lunch break and everyone loved it! Yup – you can guess what happened, we all had to make it! 😁

We were all new quilters and didn’t really have such big stash then, definitely not 24 different Christmas fabrics. Well, you likely guess it again – the very first fabric exchange happened! Each of us got 4 different fabric, cut it up in six pieces and we exchanged them – voila! 24 different fabrics for all!!

Pattern called for a completely scrappy quilt, meaning all different colors together, but I obviously couldn’t quite handle that… I divided mine into all greens and all reds and ended up with two quilts. Yeah, scrappy was not my forte, specially then.

It is an easy to make and interesting pattern – stars are not blocks but rather they are formed as the quilt comes together – star points are part of the sashing strips and star centers are cornerstone squares. Really neat ! I really should try to find that very old issue of AP&Q and see whose pattern it is…

We all finished our Christmas quilts then and that prompted our first little holiday exhibit at work! We hung all our makes in a small library/conference room, ordered some pizza and invited everyone to see – it was so fun!! Some treasured memories. I know we also have photos… those printed photos, is some photo albums, somewhere… not easily accessible on our phones… haha! But I will find them and show you, soon.

I also took one of those photos and sent a letter and a photo (in regular mail!!), to the editors of AP&Q magazine, and lo and behold – we ended up in a magazine!!

(will go to find that old photo as soon as I can and put it here!)

UPDATE: found this copy of the magazine page that hangs in my sewing room – it’s a black and white one (hey, it was made back in the day when color photocopy was not the norm…), but it shows it all:

It says in here that pattern was in December 1996 issue of American Patchwork & Quilting and this photo was in October 1997 issue.

I feel so lucky and grateful to have these special memories. I really do.

Two Christmas quilts in my house were so loved and I could never put them away after the holidays – kids used them all the time when they were young!! They were always somewhere in the living room, all year long! Now I still keep them like that, kinda like a tradition? Hence, they are a bit worn…

Flannel definitely lost the fuzz too…

I have to grin at my very simple and sparse quilting then… and with metallic thread that does not wear well. .. it disappeared in some places ?

Some fabric lost its gold metallic accents too… a well loved treasures indeed.

So here they are, on the sofa again, by the Christmas tree…

And obviously Charley and Tess think they should be in the photo too…

Interestingly, I never made another Christmas quilt! Made a lot of other Christmas and holiday things and a lot of gifts, but not another quilt for us. Hmmm… time to make it?

What do you think?

Do you have a favorite Christmas/holiday quilt?

These two make me smile every day. Now that is a gift, right?

Hope you are enjoying your holiday treasures and memories,

Love,

Marija