Orangewood Quilt: The Polar Magic One

  

You can get a copy of the Orangewood Quilt Pattern here!!

  

I had a lot of fun making this quilt!  When the Polar Magic fabric line came out over the summer, I knew I wanted to make a Christmas quilt with the line.  I love it's modern mix of polar bears and ornaments and fun colors including pinks and blues along with the traditional red and green.

  

  

Once I had the fabrics in hand, I wanted to make an Orangewood quilt, but the pattern needed a couple of modifications to work since it requires 1/2 yard cuts for each of the feature fabrics, and I had purchased a fat quarter bundle of the fabric line.

  

Fortunately, there were at least two prints in each color within this fabric collection.  I decided to use alternating prints for each column.  I selected the fabrics for my alternating columns and then cut out only half of the required squares for each fabric. 

  

For example, a small throw requires 8 squares of each Color 1 - 6; therefore, I only cut 4 squares of each fabric since I had 12 selected fabrics.  Then I followed the pattern being cautious not to mix my two alternating columns, and paying extra attention as I was constructing the quilt top to make sure the columns did, in fact, alternate. :)

  

  

Then, came the really fun part!  My step mom recently purchased a long arm sewing machine!!!!  What?!?!!!!  Once her machine was set up and going, we talked about quilting one of my quilt tops with it.  My son was enamored by the polar bears and asked that this quilt be his Christmas present, so my step mom and I decided this would be the one to quilt first!

  

  

Choosing the panto was surprisingly easy.  My son is absolutely obsessed with spiders and my step mom grew up with a tradition that a spider web in your Christmas Tree is a symbol of good luck!  She found a simple and cute meandering spider and web panto -- Meet the Christmas spider quilt! :)

  

For the backing, I used an Ikea duvet cover I had with fun and bright animals!  I love using Ikea duvets for backing when I can.  They are inexpensive and you get two backings out of each duvet!  Just make sure you read the materials to make sure it is a fabric you are comfortable sewing with!  I try to stick with only the cotton and flannel ones.

  

  

Awww, and Vanilla Bean just celebrated her 14th birthday!!  Happy birthday sweet girl!

  

There were four prints in the collection that was not used when sewing the quilt top, so they were used for some scrappy binding :). 

  

I had so much fun sewing this quilt, and seeing a long arm machine in action.  I'm looking forward to working with the machine some more on future projects!