Reindeer Mini Quilt

I love a good sewing surprise - I've done swaps, subscription boxes, and Advent calendars in the past - but last year I was intrigued by a new premise: Sugaridoo was going to send a project packaged as an Advent calendar.  Each day, we'd open the package to get the supplies and instructions for the next step.  This sounded like much more fun than a bunch of random notions, plus I'd get fabric!

I breezed through the traditional and paper piecing sections, but then hit a wall when it came to the applique - not my favorite technique.  I put the project down in January when I cleaned up my Christmas decorations and didn't pick it up again until last week.  The remaining applique only took a couple of hours (of course).  And then it was time for the fun part, quilting it!  The pattern called for a cross-hatch over the entire thing, but I love playing with thread and FMQ, so I did my own thing.  Adding to my dislike of applique, my free motion quilting foot would not stitch nicely through the appliqued pieces, so I settled for a simple outline using my regular piecing foot.  Doing the cross-hatching only in the background meant a lot of buried threads, but I went in sections and it wasn't that bad.  In a piece this small, anything (including applique!) is possible!

You can see the different FMQ elements better in the back of the quilt.  I did wavy lines in his head and swirls that could work as Santa's beard in his muzzle.  It's a little stiff from the quilting being so tight, but it's a wall hanging so that actually works in its favor.  I really wanted to use the extra backing from my Fresh Cut Pines quilt to back the quilt, but I didn't have a piece quite big enough so I had to supplement it with this scrap left over from one of the blocks in my Mother quilt.  The Advent calendar came with pre-cut binding, but I used leftover border from the Christmas Memories quilt because I prefer a chunkier binding and I like this color better.

And there you have it, one adorable Christmas mini-quilt!  This last picture is it hanging on display in my family room,  where it will stay until I put out the Valentine's Day mini quilt.  This is my last planned finish for 2024 - if another quilt is done it will be a happy surprise.  Happy Holidays to you and thanks for reading!

This is also my Favorite Finish for December 2024 and I'm linking up with Yvonne at Quilting JetGirl to show it off!