A Month of Quilt Tops: DAYS 19-22: Holiday Quilts!

I try to make a few holiday quilts for my Etsy store every year, and summer seems to be the best time to work on them, even though it is very unseasonal!  First up is Halloween/Fall.  I had a large bag of leftover scraps from previous projects, so I pieced a bunch of table runners (more on those later), but I did want to make a couple of quilts as well. Both of these quilts were made from scrap packs purchased from Etsy sellers.  The first one started with a bag of 5 inch strips of a Riley Blake Halloween line.

The fabrics were cute, but there wasn't a lot of variety, so I took a trip to the fabric store (I know, torture!) and chose a few coordinating prints to round out the quilt.  The fabrics I purchased were not necessarily Halloween, because I still wanted the adorable Riley Blake prints to be featured, so I just chose some coordinating colors for a simple patchwork quilt.  I had enough leftover squares to make a table runner as well.

The second quilt was made from a box of Sandy Gervais jelly roll strips and squares that I purchased from another Etsy seller's destash.  Originally I thought I would have enough pieces to make one of my Hip to Be Square quilts, but as I was piecing, I realized that many of the strips weren't long enough to cut enough matching pieces for the blocks. 

 I was able to piece 30 blocks, but the quilt still looked a little small.  I trimmed the remainder of the strips into 5 inch pieces and made a piano key border, which turned out really cute.  Once again, I lucked out with just enough to finish the project!

Now on to Christmas!  I brought a fat quarter bundle of Grinch fabrics with me, but had trouble figuring out what to do with them.  Another trip to the quilt store solved the problem -- the new collection of Grinch fabrics includes a panel of rectangles. 

I cut our the panel pieces into identical sizes (Beware of cutting "on the lines" when you purchase a panel, by the way, because they are rarely printed accurately.  Select a size that works for all of the panel pieces, and cut to that size, even if you have to trim the borders of the pieces a little).  I matched each panel rectangle up with a narrow border strip and a wide border strip and made 9 blocks for this cute lap quilt!

I still have Grinch fabrics that I need to play with later this week -- we'll see if I can come up with something creative for the rest of the collection!

Finally, I used this pattern to make a quilt out of Kate Spain's beautiful Flurry fabric collection.

 The "present" blocks went together quickly and easily; the assembly and borders took a little longer, but I do love the overall effect!  I ended up omitting the final narrow white border that the pattern called for because I like the way it looks as is:

I'm hoping to work on some Christmas stockings for our family this week, and I'm thinking that it would be fun to make a table runner our of this "present" block, as well.  Happy holidays!