Just dropping in today to show off my latest pattern – the Merry Xmas Mini Quilt.
I love doing a little bit of Christmas sewing mid-year. There’s no pressure as it’s not December, and it’s great to have a few projects in the can when the silly season comes around.
This pattern is a fun and easy holiday decor sewing project for a mini quilt that can be used as a table topper, a wall hanging or a greeting on a door (perhaps below your favourite Christmas wreath). This mini quilt finishes at approximately 30″ x 20″.
The Merry Xmas Mini Quilt is also very scrap friendly. Both of my versions seen in this post use scraps for the letters. It also only takes a half yard of background fabric, which is very stash-friendly.
So let’s have a closer look at my two samples here.
Red and White Merry Xmas Mini Quilt
First up is my classic red and white version, with a black border. Very Santa-reminiscent colours.
I pulled out all of my red scraps and had some fun choosing my favourites.
The background fabric is this lovely Speckled Metallic White Gold fabric by Rashida Coleman-Hale for Ruby Star Society. The gold dots give this fabric a lovely Christmas vibe.
Some other options that I considered – this white fabric with sweet stars* by Deb Strain for Moda, as well as these little snowflakes* on a silvery background by Robert Kaufman.
Once I had finished my quilt sandwich, I went to my favourite straight line quilting design – the good old cross hatch.
I love how it adds so much texture to the piece. The added bonus is that dense quilting like this adds lots of rigidity to the mini quilt. This helps it hang nicely on the wall/door.
I used a hera marker* and ruler to mark out a one-inch grid.
I like to sew all the lines in one direction first before sewing all the lines in the second direction. With the first lines I like to start in the middle of the quilt and work out to each edge in succession. I find this prevents puckers if the quilt moves a little. The movement can escape to the edges as I move toward them.
For the second direction lines it really doesn’t matter where you start because the quilt sandwich is fixed in place by the previous quilting. This is handy when you’re playing bobbin chicken. You can choose a line length that matches how much thread you have remaining. (Bobbin chicken – you don’t have much thread left in your bobbin…how far can you get before it runs out? If it runs out mid line you’ll have to unpick it, so make sure you judge correctly!!)
Once I’ve sewn all the one-inch cross hatch grid lines, I then go back and sew another line between them all. I don’t mark these lines with the hera marker, I just eyeball them. As my walking foot is almost an inch wide, it’s easy to use it as a guide to find the middle point.
If you look closely below, you’ll see where I missed a line! (Don’t worry, I will go back and fill it in.)
The backing for this red and white Merry Xmas Mini Quilt is two spotty red fabrics I’ve had in stash for a while.
The binding is a black Lizzie House Constellations fabric. I used my sewing machine to sew the binding to the quilt, and then straight-stitched the binding to the other side. You can see the line of stitches on the front here.
Teal and Low Volume Merry Xmas Mini Quilt
The next version of the Merry Xmas Mini Quilt I sewed is this teal and low volume version.
The low volume fabrics are all scraps. I had plenty to choose from.
The teal fabric is another version of the white background fabric I used in the last mini quilt. This is Speckled Metallic Teal by Rashida Coleman-Hale for Ruby Star Society. (Honestly, there’s a big collection of Speckled fabrics in so many colours, and all of them would make fabulous backgrounds!)
My quilting started out as a cross hatch again. I sewed my one-inch grid and then I changed to a decorative straight stitch for all the half-inch lines.
This stitch is a few straight stitches and then a little star. Perfect for quilting a Christmas mini quilt.
For my backing I had a small amount of this Ruby Star Society fabric by Melody Miller. The doves were perfect. (You can also find pink and white versions of this fabric on Etsy too.)
For binding, I just used the same background fabric. I did consider a red and white stripe but I like this understated finish.
I machine sewed the binding on and then hand sewed this one on the back. (There wasn’t a thread that matched the fabric in my stash. I didn’t want to machine sew the binding down with something that didn’t blend in.)
It was nice to hand sew the binding down. It took about 90 minutes and I got to sit quietly for a while and enjoy working on a hand sewing project.
So there you have it! A cute Merry Xmas Mini Quilt that will hopefully brighten up your home this holiday season.
If you’d like to sew your own Merry Xmas Mini Quilt you can find the PDF pattern here in the pattern shop.
Happy Sewing!
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