The Last and First Finishes

Hey there, friends!  Welcome to 2025! I hope your holiday season was fantastic.  Today, I'm really excited to share my last finish of 2024 as well as my first finish of 2025, and my goodness! It has surely consumed me for the last couple of months.  I've been eating, breathing, and dreaming about the Twelve Days of Christmas since early November!

I hinted at this project before Christmas as a possible fourth book, but after some discussion with my editor at Landauer, we have decided that since this quilt is so detailed, it works better as a stand-alone, Block of the Month-style pattern, rather than included in a book with other projects.

I just love the Twelve Days of Christmas.  The song itself can be repetitive, but I've always loved Christmas things with this theme.  The different figures are so cute, and there are lots of different representations, from boho-crafty, to cartoonish, to fancy and filled with old-world charm.  

My mom has always loved Twelve Days themed things as much as I do (maybe why I have such a fondness for it myself?), and I finished this quilt in time to take it to her when we visited for Christmas as my last finish of 2024.  But, this post is titled the last AND first finishes, so yes!  That means I actually made TWO of these quilts, and finished the second one just last week as my first finish of 2025.  This one's all for me!  Seriously, between sketching/designing, digital illustrations, and actually sewing two full quilts, I've been positively consumed with the Twelve Days of Christmas lately!

Right now, the weather here is so cold and dreary that I haven't gotten outdoor photos of the second quilt yet, but here are some close-ups of the blocks. 

The one noticeable difference between the two quilts is the hen's beak.  For my mom's quilt, I used the Tri-Recs ruler to make a triangular beak, but on the second, I made the beak from a half-square triangle.  I loved the look of the first beak, but when pattern writing, it just isn't practical to ask a quilter to purchase a whole ruler set for one small piece in a quilt.  So, I modified the beak on the second quilt.  Also, this is definitive proof that these really are TWO separate quilts.  Ha!

These indoor photos actually show off the quilting really well.  And I want you to see that for sure, because each block and shape is custom quilted with thread that matches the piecing.  I wanted to add as much realistic texture to the figures as possible.

I love the creamy backdrop in this quilt.  It needed a neutral that would allow the bits of white to stand out, but not so creamy that the faces of blocks 8-12 would get lost.  Kona Eggshell was the perfect choice.  The warm color almost has the look of parchment, which is just right for a Twelve Days of Christmas quilt.  After quilting each block, I added dense stippling to the background for lots of crinkly goodness.

On the back, I wanted to find a Twelve Days of Christmas print, and when I saw this print by Riley Blake's A Pear-fect Christmas, I just knew I had to have it.  Isn't it adorable?

I chose the print in the red color way, which makes the back very Christmas-forward with all of the red and green.  I widened it out with the same light green print used in the drummer block on the front.  Knowing that I was making a second quilt with an identical back, I didn't get a photo of the full backing on the first (when the weather was nice and sunny).  So, no pic of the full backing yet.  It will have to wait for better weather.

The binding is Kona Basil and the rich, Christmas green frames everything nicely.  Incidentally, I wanted the numbers to stand out as unique from the block figures, so Kona Basil is used on those as well, but nowhere else in the quilt.  The other green fabrics in the blocks are actually small prints or tonal fabrics.  Kona Basil is the only solid green so it works really well for the numbers and binding, tying everything together.

This quilt measures 70" square, and it's destined for a large wall in my house.  I can't wait to hang it up next Christmas.  But I do have a little more to share about this one-

I'll be hosting a Block of the Month Quilt Along, with more information coming in late summer 2025!

I'm busy working on the pattern for this quilt and you'll get all of the pertinent details later, but go ahead and make plans to sew-along with me!  It's going to be so much fun!

Whew!  Maybe it's because this has been such a big project for me, but I feel like this post has been absolutely jam-packed.  So, instead of cramming one more thing into this week, save all of your finishes and we'll kick off NTT 2025 next week on 1/15.

Happiest 2025 to all of you!