Hey everyone, it’s Ingrid here from Joe June and Mae.
Have you heard about ‘Christmas in July’? Apparently this idea first emerged in 1933, at a girls camp called Keystone Camp in Brevard North Carolina. One of the camps co-founders decided to dedicate two days in July to celebrate Christmas again.
With everything from fake snow to all sorts of Christmas decorations and of course Santa, the Christmas in July carries on til today. You can read the full story on how Christmas in July started here on Southern Living.
But today I’m not talking about going full Christmas, but to start a little bit of Christmas sewing early, so you will not be overwhelmed this year, once December rolls around.
Have you seen this pretty fabric series, called Arrival of Winter by Sandy Gervais.
This fabric series is perfect for the cutest little Christmas sewing projects. I thought of my adorable little Christmas ornaments, when I saw this fabric line.
The Christmas Ornaments pattern features 5 different foundation paper piecing patterns to make Christmas ornaments. All of the blocks will be 3″x 3″ so the perfect size for pretty little Christmas ornaments or gift tags.
Check out the pattern here.
All of the little quilt blocks are paper pieced. This means you can use small fabric pieces and you do not have to pay attention to the grain of fabric. Best of all, you can feature the cutest little print details of the fabric line in your quilt blocks.
Aren’t these just the cutest?
My personal favorite though, is the tiny Christmas tree…
Again you can use the pretty prints of this fabric line to fussy cut and send some adorable little messages for Christmas.
You can use this pattern for Christmas ornaments or also gift tags…. who would’t want to receive a Christmas gift with a cute little hanging ornament featuring a sweet little tree like that?
I made a quick YOUTube video showing you how to make little ornaments with these tiny quilt blocks.
Who’s going to pull out the fabric and is getting into ‘Christmas in July’ sewing right away?
Here is also another blog post on these ornaments, made with another super pretty Riley Blake Designs fabric collection.
If you’re not into Christmas ornaments yet…. You will be, I am sure 🙂 Here is another great project with the ‘Arrival of Winter’ fabric line.
This is a quick and easy sewing project for ‘Christmas in July’. A table runner with three Fair Isle star quilt blocks.
I used a third color for the stripes between the star parts of the quilt block pattern to add a little more depth to it. But of course you can also just use two colors for this table cloth.
Sew three Fair Isle star quilt blocks in your desired size, I made the 10″x10″ size of the block, and cut your sashing strips accordingly. I cut 4 strips 10″x 2.5′ for the short sashing and 2 70″x 2,5″ for the long strips .
Then stitch these together.
I added a very thin fusible batting and the backing fabric. Make a quilt sandwich and quilt to your liking. You can use self binding or add your own bias binding to finish the table runner.
Here it is, the pretty Fair Isle Star table runner for your Christmas in July party 🙂
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Happy sewing
Ingrid x