How To Quilt Christmas Quilts

I don’t know about you, but when I’m working on a special project (although, what quilt isn’t special?!), I like to think carefully about the quilting designs that I choose. Sometimes an all-over basic design is what the quilt needs, like for a sampler quilt to help unify all the different blocks together. Sometimes a quilt needs some more careful quilting in the background so as to accentuate the piecing. With quilts that feature an image or are more themed, like Garland, sometimes you can use your quilting to add to the design. Given that this is the week of the Christmas In July bundle, I thought I’d talk a bit about how to quilt Christmas quilts to add even more festive touches to your quilt.

A few years ago, I made a Christmas present quilt. It was early in my free-motion quilting journey, and I battled with the 100% polyester batting I used (the only kind I could find in Japan at the time), but I pushed through to add the decorative touches. In the background space between the presents along each row, I quilted a holly leaf-esque design.

In the space between each row, I chose a large loop design, inspired by Christmas lights.

And in between the pieced ribbons on top of each present, I did a few swirly loops as if they had been wrapped with curling ribbon!

NOTE – this quilt doesn’t actually have enough quilting on it, as the designs are spaced too far apart to properly secure the three layers together. This means that with lots of washing, the batting is more likely to come part, or the quilt to get a bit misshapen and lumpy. I really should add some more quilting now, but anyway… Protect your quilts and at the very least, stitch in the ditch (the seam line) if you don’t want there to be any quilting seen in certain, big patches. Which is what I did with Garland…

For Garland, the first step was to secure the quilt top invisibly by stitching in the ditch around each half-square triangle, and along the seams in the centre space. I wanted to keep it clean and simple, like the clean and modern wreath design that it is.

But as it’s a Christmas wreath, what do all green Christmas wreaths need? Red berries! At least, for me they do! I used Aurifil 1103 to do three circles bunched together, going over each circle a few times to get a thicker outline. I decided to add four clusters of berries, so that it looked pleasantly circular. I used two different shades of green (to match the Carolyn Friedlander prints) to create a leaf, or orange peel, pattern in each half-square triangle.

I’m now working on the Geometric Reindeer by Quiet Play, and I already know how I’m going to quilt it – with various sizes of pebbling and the occasional asterisk to emulate snow on the white background. As for what, if anything, happens in the reindeer, we shall see. I want this baby to pop! And dense background filler will do that.

(why yes, I have un-Geometric-ised the reindeer, because I ended up just wanting to use this gorgeous teal print from Shimmer!)

Do you have any tips or tricks you’d like to share for quilting Christmas quilts? Let us know in the comments!

You can find Garland here:

My store

Etsy

Craftsy

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