Christmas Decorating | NW Quilted Cat

Continuing on my Santa and mini-quilt kick, I’ve created another simple project using Carol Doak’s pattern. The Santa block is a small, 3-inch paper-pieced pattern that you can obtain if you join her online Yahoo group.

I really like this little pattern because it comes together very quickly and you can use scraps from your stash. I made this particular project as a Christmas gift for my mom. She has one Christmas tree that she decorates each year just using Santa ornaments! (Mom, if you’re reading this, just act surprised when you open this gift!).

I started out with 5 little Santas, but decided to use just 3 of them.

Here are the 3 little Santas up-close:

Primitive Santa 1

Santa 1 has a dark blue background with a white snowflake print in the foreground. The dark blue sky has little white dots for snowflakes.

Primitive Santa 2

Santa 2 has a black background with a printed word foreground featuring names of Santa’s reindeer. The black sky also has white snowflake dots, but I didn’t fussy cut it well enough to display them!

Primitive Santa 3

Santa 3 has a white-on-white background with a grey foreground. The white background has white snowflake dots, but my camera didn’t pick them up very well.

All the Santas have embroidered eyes and noses using black DMC embroidery floss.

I then added a 1.5 inch inner green border around all 3 Santas. The outside border is black with silver snowflakes and measures approximately 2.5 inches. The binding is the same green fabric as the inner border. I used my regular sewing machine to stitch around each Santa block in the green border and to stitch around the 3 blocks in the outer border.

Completed 3 Primitive Santas

The backing fabric is also a black snowflake print but features white snowflakes rather than the sparkly, silver ones. I need to save the sparkly fabric for other Christmas projects!

Since I don’t have an embroidery machine, I wasn’t sure what to do for a quilt label. Normally, I make labels at my mom’s house, but that would give away the surprise! Instead, I used another one of Carol’s little 3-inch blocks, a snowman, to make the label. Check at my earlier post here on the snowmen.

I hand-embroidered my wording onto the snowman block and then added a border using the backing fabric. I then stitched it down to the backing.

Here’s the whole back:

Primitive Santa Backing

Here’s a close-up of the snowman label:

Snowman Label

Happy Paper Piecing!
~Jennifer~

About 6 or 7 years ago, I purchased an adorable little Christmas pattern called Straddling Santa by The Wooden Bear. In my excitement, I also purchased some great fabrics to go with the pattern. Then, I got home and the pattern and fabric went into my to-do pile. Sound familiar?

I did finally make this little wall hanging about 3 years ago and have used it to decorate my fireplace mantel each year. It adds just the right touch of “Santa” to the space, along side our stockings.

The finished project is about 19.5 inches by 23.5 inches and you can easily make it with scraps from your stash. The largest piece of fabric needed is 3/4 yard for the backing.

Here’s a look at Straddling Santa:

Straddling Santa Wall Quilt

I used 2 little black buttons for the eyes and 1 red button along his coat. I used my Bernina to do some basic free-motion quilting in the cream background blocks and in the red border.

I have one more fun little Christmas mini quilt that I started several years ago to finish. All I need to do is the quilting and binding! It’s always a great feeling to finish up these projects.

Enjoy!
~Jennifer~