When I found this Santa panel at the guild’s re-home table in October, I just fell in love with it. I loved the motifs, the black background, and the faux patchwork. I thought it would be fun to custom quilt it giving me more practice with freehand quilting and ruler work. I had a piece of fabric with snowmen that might work for a backing.

I measured the space I wanted to hang it, and found that it would need one more border to be big enough to hang from the clips already on the wall. I had several pieces in the stash that would do for a final border. These two were auditioned first, and I didn’t really like either one. The cardinal print scale is too big for the panel. The mitten print has a different green that didn’t really go well.

This print with cherries on black went nicely.

Looking at the length, I would need to piece it to have enough for the long sides.

One think I do when I only need a tidbit more is to cut a longer length to add, then cut the size starting from the shorter side. This puts the seam in the middle of the border, not next to the corner.

OK, so a short time later, the top is done.

Next was to load it on the longarm, and cross my fingers that the backing would be big enough after I began quilting it. Tops will often stretch a bit, and end up longer or wider than planned.

The first thing was to stitch in the ditch on the top area on the outer border seam. I am using black Glide thread on top, and Bottom Line in the bobbin.

Next, I stitched a straight line where the inner border seam would be.

Using my longest ruler, I stitched around the four patches in continuous lines across two sets, then pivoted and continued across the next two until I ran out of space. Then I turned around and stitched the other sides going back to the starting point.

On the red plaid triangles, I marked the midpoint with chalk.

Then, using a shorter ruler, I quilted three points in each one. This allowed me to stitch to the center and down to the bottom corner, then back up to the starting point, then finally down to the bottom corner again. This became the starting point for the next triangle.

The four patch units got loops or pumpkin seeds. So I could stitch several without stopping, I stitched half a loop to the center, the full loops on the black and the white plaid, then half a loop in the green. This would lead to the next starting point for the next four patch.

When I had gone as far as I could without advancing the quilt, I stitched the missing loop sides going back to the starting point.

After I had done as much of the borders as I could, I outlined the motifs in the center, and filled in the black backgrounds with stippling.

Each panel was treated the same.

When I had done all the panel motifs at the top, I advanced the quilt, stitched in the ditch around the borders and four patches as before, and stippled the background of the remaining motifs.

The border motifs were stitched on the sides, then when the quilt was advanced again, I did the ones across the bottom.

When the entire panel had the background areas and inner borders quilted in black thread, I did the outer border in one continuous line with touch-and-go feathers. These are easy, because there is no backtracking. You just touch the center of the feather before it, and swing wider to go back to the spine. I did one line of half feathers all the way around.

The last thing to do with black thread was to quilt wavy lines around the plaid sashing in the center.

This was the largest amount of quilting, but I wasn’t done yet. I’ll show you the rest next week. It is just too much for one post.

What do you think so far?