Early this week I finished the Christmas Bird Quilt.  (Krissi is assisting here.)  A Christmas scrap quilt was on my September goals list, but I had no idea it would turn out like this.  I was thinking of something random and scrappy, maybe with white, or cut into strings.

When I opened my Christmas scrap locker (yes, I have one…), this bird fabric caught my eye.  I had a yard each of two of them (I think I bought them when my mom and I used to wrap Christmas gifts in quilt fabric.), but not much of the prettiest one.  It looked like Swiss cheese, as I had fussy cut it for a quilt years ago.  So I fussy cut it again, into four-inch squares and framed them in a similar, unrelated fabric to bring them up to the six-inch squares of the other prints.  Then I used a red batik and various holiday green scraps to frame each bird square, making them ten inches.

The whole quilt is 50″ x 70″.  I used every bit of the red fabric, doing some very creative piecing (this is patchwork we do, after all), but after quilting and washing, it hardly shows.

Some of the borders were bits of beautiful red, green, and gold swag prints that I had carefully cut and matched on another project a couple years ago.  In this case, all I could do was whack it up, throw it on, and see what happened.  And I like it.  In spite of the randomness, it really adds an old fashioned Christmas feeling.

I love the backing fabric.  It’s more green and gold than this shows, so it goes well, and it shows the quilting.  I used all Superior Bottom Line (50 wt.) thread, light green on the back, red and green and the front.

I think this will be a donation to my YMCA.  They have an auction every November.  Not only do I do my fitness there, but they sponsor my virtual farmer’s market, where I order on line and pick up produce there weekly.

And there will be a scrappier Christmas quilt this year or next.  Maybe.

I’m linking up with Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.