Because we knew that 2020 was going to be a busy quilt-making year, Mary and I started a Christmas quilt for her sister, Debra, back in June. A few years ago I purchased a Dashwood Studio Christmas panel that uses some of the non-traditional Christmas colors I’m drawn to: turquoise, blue, and grey along with a touch of gold on a white background. We decided to design a quilt for Debra around this panel and some Christmas tree blocks. In January I had made some paper-pieced tree blocks to donate for quilts for a family in Maine who had lost their father in a tragic way. Debra had seen photos of these blocks on my Instagram feed and had expressed that she would love a quilt with some of these paper-pieced trees. Mary and I found some complementary fabrics on Etsy including a glittery white snowflake fabric for background and several metallic fabrics for the trees. The trunks of the trees and the binding are made from a lovely grey wood fabric. 

The 50.5” quilt went together fairly easily. We didn’t have a problem with it until we washed it and had significant color bleed from the turquoise colored backing fabric even though we used color catchers and washed with Synthrapol dye-catching detergent. The white glitter snowflake fabric on the front wasn’t affected because it has a slightly plastic feel to it from the glitter which obviously repelled the dye. The two panels picked up most of the color bleed, and a little bit  of the white quilting thread also picked up some dye, but it’s not super obvious.

I really do like the turquoise tree panel that we used for the back of Debra’s quilt. But I will never use it again with any white fabric! I have one more in my stash, and I have also used the panel for what I call my Turquoise Christmas Tree Cheater quilt which I will share about in a future post.

Here’s a pic I took before we washed the 50.5” square quilt where the background of the snowy forest panels is still white:

Debra has received her quilt, and she says she loves the panels with the blueish background. I would have much preferred they had stayed the original color, but I’m just glad that the backing fabric wasn’t red. I don’t think pink would have gone at all with the color scheme!

Debra’s quilt is the first of a few Christmas projects I’ll be sharing about this fall. What about you? Do you have any Christmas projects in the works?