Holly Berry Quilt

I mentioned in a previous post that I had been making Jess Entwistle's Holly Berry quilt during December - you know because December is a notoriously quiet month, especially for small business owners!

I can never resist a spot of Christmas crafting - as soon as the decorations go up in the house I start to think 'oo actually that quilt/tree skirt/cushion/hanging decoration (delete as applicable) would look great there' and it doesn't take much encouragement from there for me to start digging through my stash. I had grand plans to have my Holly Berry quilt finished and photographed amid a constellation of Ikea light up paper stars (it would have looked stunning on Insta!) but due to the supply chain issues this year our local Ikea never got the stars in store in time and well, I was never really going to have the whole quilt completed anyway. One for Christmas 2022 though.

I had wanted to make a Holly Berry quilt since Jess first sent me a few pictures through when she was first developing the design. I loved its big bold graphic quality, it was so striking and a bit different to all of the other festive quilt patterns out there. And so mid-December I decided to pull out all of my green solid fabric scraps and start cutting.

The cutting does stop when Mabel gets involved. Which is frequent.

I originally wanted the background fabric to be navy but I didn't have enough in my stash and I wanted to get on with it and so I opted for some white on white Dashwood Twist.

The instructions Jess has put together are fantastic and have some great tips on how to tackle the drunkard's path curved piecing.

Despite all of the curvy sewing it came together surprisingly quickly, once you get into the curve-sewing zone the blocks quickly pile up. The quilt comprises of 6 rectangular blocks, Jess is making a single block into a pillow sham too so maybe that's a last minute project for me next Christmas!

I love how the orange, pink and read berries pop against the greens. I have never been much of a fan of the colour orange but have really come around to loving it over the last couple of years.

I quilted the top using my now favourite quilting design, the walking-foot friendly triangle meander from Jacquie Gering's book Walk.

I can't quite decide on the binding fabric and so the quilt is folded up on a chair (usually with a sleeping cat on top) waiting for me to make my mind up - the current contenders are a pink and red diagonal candy stripe or a navy fabric with little baubles printed on it. Decisions decisions.

 I'll be stalking Ikea from early November for those paper stars to realise my dream Insta festive shot.