Swell Christmas Quilt

 

Years ago, while visiting my sister in Seattle, we went into an amazing quilt shop that had a little of everything. I was thumbing through their Christmas packs and I found the cutest little charm pack, Swell Christmas by Urban Chiks. It was love at first sight!

 

 

I knew this pack was destined to come home with me and become a beautiful Christmas quilt. In all honesty though, I didn’t have any Christmas quilts at the time. I didn’t have any good fabric, and I didn’t have the time to go hunting. So, the charm pack as tucked away and I moved on to other projects.

 

 

Years later, I finally decided it was time to get some Christmas quilts into my collection. I pulled out the few pieces I had and found the charm pack. I looked it up online and discovered there was still some pieces out there to order. All I had left to do was figure out what pattern to use.

 

I always find it a bit tricky with charm packs because they’re a bit small. I don’t want to cut them up smaller because I don’t want to loose the patterns. So, I decided to do a simple window pane pattern with the squares, using white as the sashing. 

 

 

I wanted a color pop in the center of each block and I found this great fabric that’s pink with red polka dots in my small collection of Christmas fabrics I had. Perfect!

 

 

Once the blocks were assembled, I wanted the sashing between the blocks to be a bit bigger to help create definition between the white in the blocks and the white sashing.

 

 

So, remember I said I’d found some pieces still online? Yeah, I ordered a bunch that could be used in this or other Christmas pieces. I absolutely love the santa faces on the red background! I think it’s the main reason I loved this set originally. I still wanted it a bit bigger, so I added another border of the holly leaves on a red polka dot.

 

 

So, then comes the backing. Again, I did a bunch of searches. Not only did I discover there was still some of the Swell Christmas fabric line out there, but there were a couple of other lines by Urban Chiks that had the same vintage feel to them. 

 

 

The line called Deer Christmas had a panel of a deer. It was so cute, and the perfect size for my backing.

 

 

Because of the scrappy nature of the quilt, I did a basic meander all over the quilt. Finally, I finished it off with a binding from a fabric from the most recent Urban Chiks Christmas line, Holly Jolly. It works great!

 

 

This quilt was so fun to make. Honestly, it came together really fast and turned out just like I envisioned. It’s a wonderful blend of vintage and modern. I love that!