A Christmas Miracle

In the Summer of 2011 I started one of my first quilt-a-longs.  It was Christmas blocks.  It was my very first time trying paper piecing and applique and several other techniques.  It took 2 years to put the blocks all together and then another couple of years before I finally put on the border.  I had a completed quilt top by the time we moved from Ohio, but it sat untouched for another year.  I finally layered it and started working on the quilting, but it was slow going, because I was trying to do intricate quilting in each of the blocks.  I lost steam and didn't touch it again for another 2 years.  I'm always so busy during the holiday season and it felt weird working on a Christmas quilt in January, so kept sitting there.

Every year my husband always jokes about how wonderful it is to have a Christmas quilt...he'd look around and start laughing, because we both knew there was no Christmas quilt downstairs.  It was in my Work-In-Progress bin.  This December I pulled it out and took a good look at it.  I decided that I was just going to bind it and finish it, because it was never going to get finished if I quilted every single block with something intricate.  The entire thing was already outlined, so I didn't need to do anymore quilting for it to be OK. 

I ran into a snag when I didn't have enough fabric to bind it, but I ordered some more fabric and got to work.  I finished it on Christmas Eve!!  It's a Christmas miracle! 

 Since it's my husband who thought I would never actually finish it, it felt appropriate that he would be the first to use it while we watched the newest Grinch movie.

It got lots of use right away, and it makes it all worth it...almost.  I'm just grateful it's FINALLY done!  Eight and a half years later we have a Christmas quilt!