Introducing the Twelve Days of Christmas block of the month...

Andrea from the Willow Cottage Quilt Company and I are giddy with excitement to announce our new Block of the Month programme, so - drumrolls and a trumpet fanfare, please - let me introduce the Twelve Days of Christmas Sampler, a fabric ode to the festive season and the joy of gifting...

The Twelve Days of Christmas Block of the Month will run for ten months, from November 2021 until August 2022. In November we will be sending you an exclusive ‘early bird’ copy of the Twelve Days of Christmas pattern book, then each month you will receive a beautifully packaged kit containing everything you need to make one (or more!) of twelve original sampler blocks. In month ten we will be assembling our quilt and preparing our binding (you will need to supply your own backing and batting).

I have had a few of these blocks in my sketchbook for a looong time but only finally figured out the piecing for a couple of elusive blocks last autumn... and then the whole quilt just danced onto the page. It has been an absolute joy to realise this idea at last! And if you follow Andrea on Instagram (if you don't, you should) you'll know that she adores everything Christmas and decorates her house exquisitely every year, so she was as excited as me to be working on a Christmas quilt :-)

The Twelve Days of Christmas blocks are conventionally machine pieced and suitable for intermediate sewists. If you are wondering if it's for you, take a look at my blog posts for 2018’s Spellbound Sew-along: the piecing methods we will be using are very similar. The quilt will finish at approximately 80" x 66" and, once again, we will be sewing with the utter deliciousness that is Tilda Fabrics. Tilda's winter collection is brimming with richly patterned prints and glowing colours and will be perfectly suited to conjuring up an eighteenth century Christmas. New this year are two different background options: Twilight and Snowdrift.

We will be revealing the quilt, sharing the fabric and opening up reservations on the 17th of August, so put the date in your diary. And if you'd like to have a preview, be sure to sign up for either my or Andrea's newsletter. Or both ;-)

Andrea and I have had the most wonderful time sewing with our block of the month participants over the past two years and we are excited to share this new Christmas-themed project with you, we hope you’ll love it as much as we do! Nicola xx