Let me give you a little “history” so you’ll know what the background of this story is. Some years ago (eleven, to be exact) I made the little panel quilt on the left as an Advent calendar for my grandchildren. Since that time it has hung in my home from early December on, and my grandchildren have visited to get candy from the little pockets. This year, however, two of my grandsons moved away, and I decided to send the Advent calendar with them so they’d have a little of their tradition to take with them to a strange place. These two were the ones who’d stopped by most often to get candy from it, so it seemed the right thing to do.
Still, that left three grandchildren here in town with no Advent calendar at all. Uh-oh … that’s not fair! So I scoured the internet for another panel that I thought would be good, keeping in mind that one of these grandchildren is about to turn 15 now. “Cutesy” didn’t quite seem as appropriate as it had before. I got lucky and found a panel with scenes of Bethlehem — and that one felt right! The complication (you knew there had to be one, right?) was that the only one I could find was damaged. One top corner with beautiful gold scrollwork was chopped off. Okay, what could I do about that? I originally thought to add a fussy-cut motif to both corners to camouflage the problem, but I ended up cutting off both corners instead; the fussy-cuts just looked out of place. Instead, I added corded piping around all six sides, then attached a navy border, followed by more corded piping and the binding.
The label will follow soon, but here is a close-up of a few of the pockets, where you can see a smaller version of what should have been in the corners of the panel.
So now you understand why I titled this post “Head Start”, right? I simply had to get this finished right away before I forgot, so I’m ahead on next year’s Christmas preparations! LOL!
