Holiday Mini Quilt {Oh What Fun Fabric Tour}

Happy June, my friends!  It's not very often that I sew with Christmas fabric in June (if ever!) but when Poppie Cotton sent me this oh so lovely fat quarter bundle of Oh What Fun fabric by my favorite designer Elea Lutz, I knew immediately I would be making a holiday wall hanging!  Last year during the winter holidays I was so bothered by the fact that I did not have one to hang!  

I'm not great at taking pictures of the fabric bundle before I dive in with my design notebook and scissors!  But this is a picture of what I have left from the bundle!  What I love about this fabric is that it has a precious vintage feel to it and makes me happy.    I don't like just any Christmas fabric; as a matter of fact I'm rather picky about it.  But this one hits all the sweet spots!   Precious little reindeer, snowmen, stockings, and fun little santa's.  The colors are absolutely wonderful; I love using pink and blue in holiday sewing!  

There is also a panel that has a few really great projects:  a bunting, ornaments, holiday gift tags, and sweet quilt labels.  They are all so adorable.  

I thought about the mini quilt wall hanging and looked at all my various patterns.  Suddenly I decided what I wanted to make was basically a large quilt block and I chose Courthouse Steps.  If you follow Sunny Day Supply on Instagram you know that she has made the most fun quilts using the Log Cabin block... you just make that block as large as you want; going around and around your center square.  So I basically did the same thing using the Courthouse Steps block.   If you've never tried it, you should!  Its a really quick way to make a quilt!  

For the center square I fussy cut a snowman from the panel (it was part of the bunting collection)!  And honestly, it came out so adorable!  I used one of the low volumes  in the collection to frame the snowman.  

Then I began the Courthouse Steps and cut a 2 inch strip from almost all of the fabrics in the collection.   Once I had them all cut I began sewing it together!  I chose to separate the pink, green, red, and blue so that it really made the colors pop!  I just kept sewing until I had used up all my strips.  My wall hanging quilt came to 36 x 36 inches.  

I have to say that most every collection of fabric that Poppie Cotton has there is a super fun selvedge.  Can I just tell you that I absolutely love using the selvedge in projects?  I can hardly think of anything I've ever sewn (whether it is a quilt, a tote bag, cosmetic bag, mini quilt, or garment) that I don't use part of the selvedge if its cute!  And all of Poppie Cotton's are cute!!!  

So, of course I had to use a few in this mini quilt as well!  I adore these darling selvedge pieces... little stockings and sweet little words.  Without a doubt, its almost my favorite part!  

I finished the quilt off with some hand quilting.  Those of you that know me, know that the big stitch hand quilting is such a relaxing finish for me.  It seems strange when I don't finish a quilt that way.  

And then days later, I decided I needed to add this super fun label to the back of my mini quilt.  It was basically the Title on the panel with all the little project pieces.  I kept looking at it as it was so sweet.  So, I cut it out and sewed a border around it and hand stitched in place; and even though its on the back of the quilt and no one will ever see it... I know it's there and WOW do I love it!!!  (The print I  used for the binding really gave it the perfect finish too!)   

And now... here is this darling quilt hung at the bottom of the my stairs!  It will be so much fun come winter time to have it hung here for a few months!  (I think I need matching stockings to hang on the rail don't you agree?!) 

And lastly, I had to quickly make some darling gift tags using a few fabric scraps and selvedge pieces.  I adore the book by Jina Barney (from Poppie Cotton) called Handmade Happiness.  These darling gift tags are in the book and you can whip them up in no time!  I have tucked them away for holiday gifting!  

Happy "Holiday Sewing in June" my friends!!!   This is a fabric collection you won't want to miss!