How Hard Can it Be?

Years ago I spotted a Christmas quilt that I wanted to make in a catalog (Keepsake Quilting, I think).  I cut out the picture for future reference because I didn't want to spend $12 on a pattern made up entirely of squares and rectangles.  After all (she said), how hard can it be?  I can now tell you, if you ever hear me say that, tie me to a tree until I regain my senses!

This is the picture from the catalog.   It looks like a Nordic sweater.

First I tried to do the layout in EQ8.  But I haven't really gotten up to speed with it yet, and wasn't sure of the best approach to making several different blocks and aligning them in a quilt.  So I copied the picture and penciled in the rows and columns.  Judging from the size of the quilt, it looked to me like the squares were all about 1" finished, except for the smaller ones around the pointsettias and, of course, the ones needed to make the half square triangles.  As I look at it now, I can see that they vary in size, but the photo in the catalog was small, so it seemed straightforward.

I wanted the quilt to be "controlled scrappy," so there are several colors in the poinsettias, both reds and whites.  I did these first, because I'd already made one block a few years ago as a small hanging quilt.  Funny, it was too big for my little quilt hanger.  That should have set off an alarm.

I made each of the rows according to my (incorrect) calculations.  When it came to putting the rows together -- whoops!!  The upshot was that I had to add blocks to each row until they were nearly equal in width.  The poinsettias were unchanged, as were the reindeer.  I had to add several tree blocks and fiddle with the checkerboards.  I also had to add some filler strips to even things out.  Here's how it turned out:

Two 1" strips (finished) on either side of the poinsettias did the trick.  I didn't have have more of the green that I'd used in the blocks, but found one that fit in well.  The reindeer row required 3 extra strips.  Apologies for the grayed-out photos below.  I guess the afternoon caught up with me!

It took some quilty math to figure out how many additional tree blocks were needed for the rows, but they came out great.  I was able to use up a bundle of Christmas fabrics that I'd picked up at Jo-Ann years ago.

So here's (most of) the final product.  I wish the poinsettias had been smaller in scale compared to the other blocks, but it still looks OK.  And it was good to use the various Christmas fabrics that were killing time in my stash.  It was intended to be a wall hanging, but now it's a good-size lap quilt.

Spending the $12 on the pattern would have made so much sense.  But I learned a lot, and in the end it was rather fun.  Now to quilt it.  I think I need to complete a course on free-motion quilting in order to tackle this.  There's time...