Christmas quilt top and block pattern

Doesn’t Woody the fence look festive? The Christmas quilt top is done, and I’m celebrating!

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It’s my most traditional and intricate quilt to date. At 72″ square, there are more than 500 3″ finished squares of all different scrappy red, cool gray, and white-on-white prints.

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It fits my goal of making something festive but sophisticated, and it will be so warm to snuggle under next to the tree. I know it’s only September, but hopefully this is plenty of time for quilting and binding.

I’ve been asked about the pattern. I used this quilt from Flickr as inspiration to design a similar block to use in repeat, so I’m going to share the pattern I made to send to the NJMQG bee mates who contributed blocks.

Each finished block is 12 1/2″ unfinished and represents one quarter of a snowflake star. I outlined one block in black on my design to demonstrate:

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CUTTING DIRECTIONS

4 1/2″ squares: 4 white, 10 red, 10 gray

3.1/2″ squares: 2 white, 4 gray

MAKE HST UNITS

Make 1 set white/white, 2 sets gray/white, 8 sets red/gray, 2 sets red/white

There are lots of great HST tutorials out there. I like to put two squares right sides together and draw a line diagonally from one corner to another. I sew 1/4″ on either side of the line and cut on the line. Press open.

Trim HSTs down to 3 1/2″ square.

ASSEMBLE BLOCK

Lay out and assemble blocks with 1/4″ seam allowance according to the photo below.

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Voila! My quilt uses 36 of these blocks to make 9 full snowflake stars. I’d love to see other versions of the blocks, so if you make some, let me know!

Ok, one more big shot:

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Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday!