I’ve started another mystery quilt-a-long…I know, I’ve enough QAL’s and SAL’s to sink a ship! There’s method in my madness though!

A couple of years ago I bought a Christmas fabric layer cake on one of the facebook destash pages. I liked it as it’s not the usual red and green, it’s in a soft blue, darker red and beige. It’s a Moda layer cake by Three Sisters called Holly Woods. For the non-quilters amongst you, a layer cake is a collection of about 42 different coordinated fabrics with just a 10″ square of each. The fabric requirements for this Christmas QAL was just one layer cake and some background fabric.

I went to the Harrogate Quilt Show on Saturday, it’s the first one I’ve been to since all the lock-downs started, it was lovely to be able to just wander round and see lots of fabric and lots of stunning quilts. I was pretty restrained on the fabric front with just two lengths of plain cotton for backgrounds…though we won’t mention the new to me sewing machine I wasn’t planning to buy!!!

Anyway, back to the QAL, it’s on the Fat Quarter Shop website, it’s called All the Trimmings. They use black for the background, making their traditional red and green fabric really pop. I bought some ivory in case my other plan didn’t work, but I also bought a sort of French navy and it works perfectly with the layer cake.

The pattern is a row by row quilt, the instructions for each row are released on a Tuesday. So yesterday I printed it off and made four holly leaf and berries blocks. They went together pretty easily and I’m pleased how the colours are working out so far. I have a best china set which these days just comes out on what I call high days and holy days, it’s a beautiful Royal Doulton design called Sherbrooke, it’s the same soft blue, so I’m thinking this will make a nice tablecloth for Christmas.

The next row pattern was been released on Tuesday, so I’ve four Christmas stockings to make. If you fancy stitching it too please follow the link above. If cross-stitch is more your thing there’s also a cross-stitch sampler version running at the same time…no I’m not doing that one as well, there are limits!