This isn’t exactly a Christmas project, but it’s related, since it’s an Advent calendar. It started out as a preprinted panel in a kit that included batting and a coordinating fabric for the backing. Each of the 24 little “windows” in the house is actually a pocket, into which I can put small pieces of candy or little notes or whatever — all for my grandchildren to find and enjoy. 🙂
The only piecing necessary for this was to stitch the pockets onto the panel. Then I machine quilted the whole thing. The panel already had black outlining the various parts of the picture, so I free-motion quilted in black over much of that. Parts of it, however, I did with silver metallic thread in hopes of giving the outdoor parts a sort of icy effect. That doesn’t show in the photo, though. Oh well. This is the first quilted piece I’ve made without a binding for the outer edges. Instead, I turned the edges in and topstitched them. The finished piece measures 30 1/2″ x 27″ and was completed at the end of September, 2002. A few years later, it went to live with one of our daughters and her two sons.