Twelve Days of Christmas Quilt

The day after Christmas, the Temecula Quilt Co started a twelve days of Christmas quilt.  One block a day for 12 days -- 3 1/2" blocks because that's their favorite size block.

Here's the link to the last post.  It goes backwards from there.

It started out so easy.  Block 1 was a 3 1/2" square.  Block 2 was a half square triangle.  The miniature quilts they do always look so fun.  When it looked like there wouldn't be applique, I decided to do it.

The fabric I chose was a Collection for a Cause charm pack from Moda. 

It wasn't until they asked if we had figured it out that I realized that there was something to figure out.  Day 1 was a block with 1 piece, day 2 had 2 pieces, all the way up until the twelfth day of Christmas that was a block with 12 pieces.  It worried me a little, so I decided to play it by ear.

I didn't do a block every day.  I think I did them all in 3 days.  The eleventh day was the only block that worried me.  By the time I had gotten that far, I figured I better try it.  It turned out okay.  (It's the "X" block on the bottom row.)

Along the way, a couple of the blocks had enough pieces cut to make two blocks, so I just made them both.  Then I loved the 9 patch so I cut the scraps to size to make more 9 patches.  I made three extra.  The tenth day was my favorite block, the four patch in a four patch, so I decided I had to make a 16 patch.  By the time I was done I had 20 blocks.  Perfect!  The finished size is about 22" x 26."

Now that it's done, I feel like I should have switched the 1 patch with the 16 patch, but I didn't catch that before.  I thought the plain block would stick out, but I think the red and tan hourglass sticks out the most.  That wasn't one of the blocks.  That was the left over from the third day.  I had to hurry and finish it because I had a quilting design that I was anxious to try.

Here's a close up of the quiling.  It's called the Baptist Fan.  It is an old pattern.  It is my understanding that it was a popular pattern for hand quilting because it didn't need to be marked.  The point of  the fan was where the quilter's wrist would be.  The stitching was in the path of the wrist moving.  If that makes sense.  I like the design a lot.

I recently bought the pattern for my Statler.  I love how it turned out!

To bind the quilt, I wanted to be brave, so I went with red.  I had a rust brown fabric that I wanted to use.  It would have looked good, but the red is striking.  I'm glad I was brave.  I used a 1 1/2" single thickness binding.  While the single thickness is nice and flat, I don't think that the thickness of a double fold binding bothers me.  I think I will stick with the double fold.

I thought miniature quilts would be too fiddly for me, but I actually like them now.  What do you think about Minis?