Merry Grinchmas!

Late last fall my cousin Susan sent me a photo of a Grinch quilt she had seen online somewhere and asked if I could make this for her and she would pay me. She watches my Etsy shop and has bought a makeup bag from me, and I sent her a mug cosy as a surprise a while back. I said I believed I could but it would take a bit of time… Christmas was coming and all that that involves.

Well, I’m very happy to have finally fulfilled this request!

About as Christmassy a picture I can get in front of our cedar tree!
Susan has been very patient. She said there was no rush. I looked at several Grinch Quilts online as well as fabrics, sent her ones I'd found for her to pick the ones she wanted, did a bunch of figuring and math to get the best use of fabric that we would purchase, and drew up a quilt layout in EQ8 using similarly coloured fabrics within EQ, and the panel I'd found (though it inputted it as you see below, with a repeat. Still, it gave her the idea of what her quilt would look like.

She approved. 

In early January, shortly after we got back from Tennessee, where we spent Christmas with Dayna and Tyler, I went fabric shopping online for her. I got the Grinch panel from CaliQuiltCo (a great online shop who has sponsored some of my QALs) and a week or so later, the accompanying grinch fabrics from NanaPride on Etsy, in, oddly enough, Tennessee! January was the awful month with Xena‘s major health issues so between that and project quilting nothing else much got done on her quilt.

I had told her that I wouldn’t be able to get to proper work on it until after we got back from Cuba, which would be mid-March. However, I needed to get my own quilt along up and running and organized so that took up a pretty big chunk of March time and her quilt kind of got pushed to the backburner.

After I finished Xander’s quilt and managed to get it delivered, 🤩😁 I decided I had better get to work on her quilt, especially when she had inquired how it was coming along. 😬 I pulled up the EQ file and got to work cutting. May 29 I had a flimsy. 

When I was looking through my own stash of black fabrics, for sashing and borders, I came across the silver pinecone-type shape on black that I thought might be quite nice as sashing. Susan really liked it and I had enough to do the inside sashing. The four borders would be solid black. Again, I turned to my stash. I had bought yardage on a Craftsy sale of Handspray by RJR fabrics a few, well several years ago. I’ve used it here and there in projects. It’s a gorgeous fabric, and it was perfect for the Grinch quilt, and I had plenty for the borders and binding. So, outside of the Grinch fabrics, all the fabric and even the batting ( great sale a month or so ago 50% off batting by the yard) I was able to get for her on sale.

I pieced the backing and loaded it, knowing I’d do an all-over design but not sure just what motif. I did know I’d stitch in the ditch around all the sashing and borders to stabilize the quilt.

A note about that red backing. I try to get sale fabrics for quilt backings. I found this one at fabricfabric.com, a new-to-me online store. They’re great: I had the fabric in less than 48 hours from ordering it! Susan was born in England and lived there the first year of her life so she has quite an affinity for England. When I was perusing their sale fabric, I spied this London calling fabric half price and said to her that I thought it might be a great backing, being red (Christmas) and London (she was born in the north of England but loves and has been many times to London) and she could even reverse the quilt if she wanted when it wasn’t Christmas. 

I had originally thought to do a lazy meander over the quilt and do some extra quilting to outline the Grinch panel, but that would have involved an awful lot of rolling back and forth, and I wasn’t sure that was the look I wanted for a bed quilt anyhow, so I went with floppy feathers and I’m very happy with how they turned out.

I used green Aurifil thread and I’m very pleased with how well it blended in over the various colours.

I explained to Susan the importance of labelling quilts.☺️

I plan to make her a set of napkins with the extra Grinch fabric and one or two London ones thrown in there as well.

Quilt Stats:

Pattern: my own, though based on a photo Susan sent me

Size: 52.5”x 63.5" (after washing)
Fabric: Grinch fabrics by Robert Kaufman; The Steel Collection by Gerri Robinson for Red Rooster Fabrics; Handspray by RJR Fabrics

Batting: Nature's Touch by Pellon 100% cotton

Backing: imprint designed in London by Jane Makower

Quilted: on Avril 119 546 stitches

Threads: pieced on my Bernina with Gütermann; quilted with Aurifil cotton 2870; Bottom Line in the bobbin

Linking up

Alycia Quilts

From Bolt to Beauty

Songbird Designs

TGIFF Quilts at The (Not So) Dramatic Life

See you back here on Saturday, June 15, when the Luminous Layers Finish Parade opens!