Christmas charms quilt

Back before Dec/2023, I started this Christmas 2 charm packs quilt (as you can see from my design wall below, it was before I had my mom over here to help me finish the surface with batting, flannel and the trims to close it all in).  I threw in some other Christmas fabrics and a background to make it the size I wanted.

This is an old pattern which is easy to make and I like how it looks continuous when it is assembled.  Basically you use one charm for the centre and then you cut the second charm of the same fabric into four 2 1/2" squares.  There is no waste on this quilt.  You use the whole charm.  

The way you lay this pattern out, is you take the charms that are not cut and you lay them out like an alternating block design.  One charm then a space, another charm then another space and so on.  Keep those four cut squares with the complete charm so you don't lose them.

Once you have your layout set, then you can start making the nine patches for that alternating square.  Whether you start off with a nine patch as I did or with a solid square is completely up to you.  You'll need to cut your background fabric into 2 1/2" squares and you will need five of them per nine patch.

The tricky part is to keep all the small squares with their matching charm as you construct the nine patch, so for this I decided to just work on one at a time.  As I was making this quilt on and off, between other things, if I only worked on one nine patch at a time, I always knew where I was.  

Each nine patch will have four different coloured fabric that will match each charm that it sits beside.  In the picture above, in the top left hand corner, you can start to see the squares taking shape.  When it is all together, it blends in so well that it is difficult to see where the blocks start and end.  Until you get up close.  

I donated this top to the Halton Hills Quilters Guild.  They matched it up with a Christmas backing and some red binding and asked someone to quilt it, at a resent guild meeting.  I decided to take it back and quilt it.  This is the finished quilt, that I only just quilted a couple of weeks ago. 

Here is a close up of some of the fabrics used to make the blocks.  For the background fabric, I chose to use a dark cream fabric with leaves and berries.

So the timing couldn't be better.  This Christmas quilt is now complete, just in time for Christmas!!

Take care everyone.