The Top Secret Christmas Quilt

I hope everyone enjoyed Christmas!  I know I did.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get to go to Missouri to spend Christmas with mom and Gene and the rest of our family.  But, we did get to spend Christmas together.  That is something I don’t take for granted since it’s never guaranteed that Rick will be here with us.  Too many times he’s been deployed.  One of the not so great benefits of being a military family.

I want to share the top secret Christmas present quilt that mom and I worked on in November when her and Gene were visiting.  Awhile back Kathy, my step sister, asked mom and I to repair an old quilt.  You can read about it here if you haven’t already.  You will laugh hysterically.  We decided it would be easier to make a new one than to repair the old one.  And the planning began.

Kathy loves big modern prints and she hates it when the fabric is chopped up into tiny pieces.  We decided to mix big prints with some solids.  You might remember a tutorial I shared in October for the Spaced Out 4 Patch, this block was a fundamental part of her new quilt.

We alternated the spaced out 4 patch with 10″ squares of big modern prints.

The overall quilt measures 90″ x 110″ and it’s a monster!  To date, it’s the biggest quilt I’ve ever quilted.  I’m pretty sure it took me a decade to quilt.  I did a large scale allover swirly design.  I really like how the quilting looks.

I used almost a whole cone of thread for this beast of a quilt.  I used yellow thread by necessity because I didn’t have enough white.  Kathy loves the yellow thread.  Woohoo!

There is one block that is not turned the right direction.  Can you spot it?  We didn’t spot it until the whole top was together so it stayed just as it was.  Every quilt needs a little mistake.  Right?
 

I picked the large damask print just for Kathy.  This is one of her favorite prints so it was perfect for the backing.

This brick wall is my new favorite place to take pictures.  I love it.

Mom and I both worked on piecing the spaced out 4 patches.  Mom put the quilt top together, I quilted it, and she finished the binding.  The binding was quite a task.  I’m pretty sure mom hated doing the binding…it was 400 inches of binding.  400 inches!

This does not look like fun!

Hours and hours of work on a quilt for a loved one, priceless.  Kathy loves her new treasure.  Mom and I are so happy she loves her monster.

However, she has been warned that I will hurt her if anything should happen to this beauty.  I’m kidding…I probably wouldn’t hurt her.  Maybe.

{I did base this design on another quilt I saw online.  It had big print squares alternated with 9 patches.  Now I cannot find the quilt and therefore I can’t link to it as my inspiration.}

16 thoughts on “The Top Secret Christmas Quilt”

  1. Your quilt turned out beautiful and I am glad that Kathy loves it. I had to look very hard to find the one block that is turned wrong and would never have seen it if you had not mentioned it.

  2. It is a beautiful quilt, did you know the Amish or one of those groups always made a mistake somewhere because you are not suppose to be perfect.
    I went back and read the blog about the quilt and I giggled too because I had the same thing happen. The first quilt I made was for my 20 year old son and he loved it. Twenty years later he brought home to me in much the same condition as the one you had and he was truly devastated that I couldn’t repair it once more. I promised him a new one next year but he said it won’t be the same.LOL Blessings Sandra

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