Country Christmas

When I discovered this panel and the coordinating pillow panel, I decided that I had to have it and hopefully make a relatively quick Christmas quilt. That was sometime before Christmas and, well, you know what they say about the best laid plans... I just didn't get a chance to work on it until March of this year. And now here it is almost May and I'm finally blogging about it. 

I realized that I likely would not be able to match the reds or greens in the panel with alternate fabrics, so I chose two Christmas prints with a black and a white background to create the blocks to fill in the spaces around the panel. I selected the Anna's Choice Quilt block from one of my books of quilt blocks, and created it without a pattern. Not really difficult since it is just 16 HSTs. And they are 16" blocks. 

At the same time as when I bought the panels, I was able to find this fabric, which was perfect for the backing. 

Isn't it awesome? You can see the quilting in this picture, too. Rather than use a Christmas-themed pantograph, I chose the Cowboys pantograph. 

This pantograph had no "shadow lines" to help line it up when advancing the quilt, so I had to add my own. 

I'm quite pleased with how it turned out and now I have a jumpstart on next Christmas.