Rainy days and Mondays...

Cue Karen Carpenter... it is definitely a rainy day and a Monday... yuck... yesterday was absolutely gorgeous...and I knew from the weather guy that there would be a change today but that doesn't make it any better. I know we need the rain, but gray days like this one make me want to stay in bed with the quilt over my head... but life doesn't let that happen....

But on a more cheerful note... I do not know what has gotten into me this last couple of weeks. I've gotten several projects done in advance of the holiday deadline... all my Halloween stuff is finished and I moved onto Christmas...OMG... I can't believe I've gotten something ready this early. I'm usually a "don't start till Thanksgiving" kinda gal ...or even more likely "I got a great idea  and it is now Dec. 23"...

I've been drooling over all the Holiday Patchwork Forest quilts on Instagram...you can see them here...and decided that I would try my hand at these wonky tree blocks.  So I looked up the tutorial  which is by Amy Smart of Diary of a Quilter.  I opted for the larger version, you can see it  here, and off I went.  Please forgive the awful color on these pictures... like I said it is rainy and gray...

These were my first two blocks....

I decapitated two chickens on this tree... not an auspicious start...

but its mate produced a better flock of birds!!

I have a large stash of Christmas novelty fabrics... okay to be honest I have a large stash of all kinds of novelties but I sort out the Christmas and Halloween ones so they are easier to find...and lots of the novelties are of a larger scale so I knew I'd have to pay attention when I cut out these blocks... here are some of my favorites...

Nutcrackers that are only slightly mangled...

Adorable pink piggies sporting scarves...

 Matryoshka dolls which added some pink and lime green to the mix...

Flamingos wearing Santa hats that remind me of my friend Vicki who lives in Florida and decorates with flamingos...

Another Nancy Wolff print with Santa driving a small green convertible... reminds me of my first convertible... a green Fiat Spyder... loved that car!!

And it wouldn't be Christmas without the Peanuts gang...

And here is my completed top...

I've got lots of Santas and reindeer and snowmen and ornaments and gingerbread guys ... and lots of dotty fabrics too.   It measures 58" x 64"... I really liked the layout with the half drop of the blocks and that necessitated an odd number of columns to be symmetrical, and to satisfy my OCD... but 7 columns wasn't wide enough and 9 columns was too wide...so my solution was to add a half block row on both sides to beef it up...and it let me add more fabrics. By my count (and we know about my woefully inadequate math skills) there are 67 different fabrics in this quilt... and it didn't make a dent in my Christmas stash or my dotty stash...

These blocks are very easy to make... it took me longer to cut the squares than it did to sew them together. I had to decide where the main motif was approximately going to end up on the tree and some took a bit of finagling. 

I plan to make another version of this quilt in a very different for me color palette.... cool aquas, greens,blues, taupes and creams... I saw this quilt...click here... and I LOVE it... I went to my local quilt shop, HomeGrown HomeSewn,  and picked up a wonderful selection of fat quarters...

While the quilt that inspired me did the smaller version of the wonky tree, I'll make the larger size because I know if I did the little ones I'd lose interest before I got the top done...not that there is any   guarantee that won't happen with the big trees too but I got a better shot at it...LOL Don't think I'll start this right away... I have another Christmas quilt idea I want to play with first.

I'll be linking up a couple of places today... Small Quilts and Doll Quilts ... LoveLaughQuilt... Em'sScrapbag.

Hopefully looking at pretty quilts and maybe a bit of sewing will lighten my gray mood, as the rain is going to continue most of today and into tomorrow and then on Wednesday its going to get lots colder... Fall has brought along a touch of Winter... ugh.

happy stitching-

carol fun