Nordic Forest

This happy little quilt went together in no time from start to finish. 

Rufus is the perfect colour of a model for this quilt!

I bought these six fat quarters and a yard of the red in the same line a year or two before Covid. Funny how we measure time now that way, and like how is it six years ago that we were hearing the terrifying stories coming out of China, and then Italy in lockdowns...

But on to brighter cheerier topics! The quilt store had a kit which I think was a cushion, made out of these fabrics, but they had sold out of the kits, so I picked up fat quarters and figured no worries, I could figure it out myself. Sadly, I did not write anything down, probably because I intended to make it right away. Which, clearly did not happen. 

I just love the motifs and colours in this wintry line, called Chalkboard Santa. I pulled out a bunch of my Christmas fabrics again this year, aiming to use some of them up as I have in previous years. What to do with these...maybe a cushion using 2 ½" squares, maybe four log cabin blocks with a border...lots of ideas but nothing stuck. Until!

I entered my Happy Christmas! (more older fabrics used up yay) in Michelle's (From Bolt to Beauty) linkup last Friday where she showed the four Christmas quilts she has that live in her home. The first one was a trees quilt. Ding! Ding! Ding! I've wanted to do a improv trees quilt since (as I said in my last post) 2017 or earlier, which is when I designed that little mug rug for Amanda Murphy's new line at the time, Winter Games. That was based on an improv tree quilt in Amanda's book. These improv trees are Amy Smart's (Diary of a Quilter). That link takes you to her tutorial. You start with 8 ½" squares, so I could get four trees per fat quarter. Yess! The tree blocks finish at approximately 7" x 9".

Warning: these tree blocks are addictive

The flimsy was done in no time at all. I debated upon putting a black skinny inner border before the red, but opted not to for two reasons: first, I liked the red and how two blocks floated into the border, and second, I had the PERFECT backing in mind of which there was only one generous metre. So it couldn't be bigger than 40" in one direction. It could be rectangular as the fleece is 150 cm or 60" wide. I'll explain why I didn't make it rectangular in a moment.

I loaded the fleece onto Avril; it's always a bit tricky with Minky or fleece as it's stretchy, but once I was satisfied that I had pinned it as as even as I could, onto the fleece went the flimsy, no batting. I pondered for a bit as to how to quilt it. My first thought was large jigsaw-shape meander. But this little quilt wanted a bit more wintry feel. 

As you can see, I remembered a favourite motif: line-drawn snowflakes. I did not mark or measure a thing, just eyeballed the spacing after the first couple at the top. Avril stitches just fine horizontally from left to right and she did snowflakes no problem, just a little grouchy on some of the diagonals, but they're short enough that it wasn't an issue. As you can also see from the photo of the back, I did random large snowflakes on the back with loops and meander. I did stitch in the ditch around the border and across the rows horizontally.

I almost bound it in the red, as there is plenty left, about 24", and this fleece is just so perfect of a red with the red cotton, but then I thought...let's just try a black... and found this striped old Debbie Mumm, and my heart sang, as did the quilt. There was just 10" x WOF left... four 2 ¼" strips! Full disclosure: joining the final ends with a mitre meant I had to leave ¼" of the selvage, but it's hidden within the folds of the binding. Because of the fleece backing, I stitched the binding to the back and then top-stitched it down onto the front. This means it's about ⅜" wide on the front and ¼" wide on the back, not my preferred ratio, but with the thickness of the fleece, I wanted control on the front of the quilt. It might be a thought to do 2 ½" as opposed to my preferred 2 ¼" binding on quilts that use fleece. So far I've only done four with fleece, lots with Minky which is very similar, though, I think, marginally less thick.

You can see how perfectly it tones in especially if you look where the light hits the front and back. There's a huge maple in the neighbour's yard that throws shadows here but it's such a good spot.

That black binding just works! Black and brown Rottie bum photo-bombing works as well! I've named the quilt (though you'll notice no cloth label, just my satin one) Nordic Forest because the motifs and colours say winter in Norway to me, ice and glittering snow, reindeer, foxes, and snowmen. All that works in Canada as well, and yes, there are reindeer in Norway as well as in Canada.

Almost all the snow is gone as we've been having more normal temperatures this week, on the plus side, and it's supposed to rain this afternoon, which will take care of the few piles around the deck from where MacGyver shovelled it off. But I was able to get a wintry photo on one of the spots by a cedar for maximum wintry effect!

As for using up fabric: I must have used about a third of the turquoise fat quarter somewhere, and two other fat quarters had four blocks made from them, leaving a measly 4" x 10" rectangle, so that would've meant duplicating blocks. I have just enough left of the fat quarters to make a makeup bag for the Etsy shop. The fleece is all gone but for about a metre by 18" strip which I think will become cat mats for the Humane Society. This fleece is so warm! I'd originally bought it to make a jacket for myself. As for the quilt, it would be a perfect baby's or toddler's Christmas quilt, or a lap quilt for in the car or on the couch... I think I will list it in the shop, tempted as I am to keep it. I do have a small Christmas quilt that I'm currently using in yoga class, and I have a couple of small winter ones, Winter Blues being the latest (see sidebar).

Quilt Stats:

Size: 40" x 41" after quilting

Pattern: #holidaypatchworkforest is the Instagram tag; tutorial by Amy Smart
Fabric: Chalkboard Santa by Jennifer Brinley for studioefabrics 

Batting: none

Backing: polyester fleece

Quilted: on Avril, 37 462 stitches

Threads: pieced with Gütermann cotton; quilted with Essential 100% cotton colour 20863 red; 100% rayon by Floriani in the bobbin

Linking up

From Bolt to Beauty

Songbird Designs

Quilty Girl

Quilting & Learning-What a Combo