On December 25, 1952, Hazel declared it her Best Christmas Ever.
She got everything she wanted but a watchband!
In 1965, Hazel gave birth to a little baby boy on Christmas Eve. I’m wondering if that Christmas perhaps replaced 1952’s Christmas as her Best Christmas Ever?
Hazel loved Christmas, and I’m pretty sure that the gatherings with family meant more to her than the presents, but she loved those, too!
I knew that I wanted to include a Christmas quilt in the book because of this, so I used the traditional Christmas Star quilt block for one of the blocks in the main Hazel’s Diary quilt, and drew some poinsettia appliqué to go on top of it.
The Christmas quilt I designed for the book is called “Best. Christmas. Ever.” and it uses the Christmas Star block in a medallion setting. I took the appliqué off the blocks, and moved it into the large triangles around the center block.
I also wanted to do an unexpected color combination as a nod to the early 1950s, when table linens had motifs in odd colors, such as red horses or gray flowers. When I saw the Chalkboard Christmas fabric by Melissa Ybarra of Iza Pearl Designs for Windham Fabrics, I knew it was what I wanted to use for this quilt.
This quilt is sized to make a great wall hanging or table topper for your Christmas decorating, or even a nice bed topper.
I’ve been wanting to try the block in some new modern fabrics as well, so I chose some pieces from Holly’s Tree Farm and The Cookie Exchange, both lines by Sweetwater for Moda. I made just two blocks, and added some triangles to join them together into this little 18″ x 36″ table mat.
I fussy cut the block centers to feature a couple of the cookie recipes from The Cookie Exchange fabric:
I did some very simple outline quilting on it, so that I wouldn’t have stops and starts or any knots to tie.
You could also make just one block with the appliqué, and add a border to it for a small square wallhanging or table mat. Lots of options!
The block pattern and the pattern for the Christmas quilt can be found in my book, “A Simple Life: Quilts Inspired by the ’50s“, or you can download just the block pattern by itself (Month 6 of the BOM) — both in my Etsy shop. Both versions have full-sized appliqué patterns for the poinsettia appliqué.
The poinsettia quilt is wonderful!