It’s never too early to start a Christmas quilt. And this isn’t especially a Christmas Quilt pattern.
It’s the Tennessee Waltz quilt block done in Christmas colors. You could just as easily do it in Halloween, fall, spring or any other colors you like.
The thing about this quilt is that by alternating the Tennessee Waltz block with a simple Snowball block, you highlight the design of the Tennessee Waltz block and create some interesting stars between the blocks.
Because I wanted to offset the blocks, I had some space leftover at the sides of the quilt, and chose to fill them with “partial blocks.”
A careful look and you will see 1/3 of a Tennessee Waltz and 1/3 of a Snowball at the end of each row and filling the top and bottom of the quilt top center.
As I made this quilt, I wanted to do a pieced border, and decided to carry on the little 4 patches that show up in each corner of the basic block.
However, instead of just placing the 4 patches side by side, I put them on point, filling the spaces with the muslin so you could see the 4 patches in the border.
Each of the other inside borders was made the width necessary in order to get a nice fit of the 4 patches in the border. To accomplish that, I measured the width of the 4 patch on the diagonal and figured out how many would fit evenly around the quilt.
Because it was larger than the center of the quilt, I knew I needed to add a border. Because it was relatively wide, instead of adding just one border, I chose to add two inside borders, varying the width of each.
I like to have my borders frame my quilt, so I used a dark green next to the center of the quilt and then surrounded the 4 patches with red. The binding of this quilt is rather wide – 1 inch – and is a double-fold bias binding.
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Tennessee Waltz and Snowball quilt in Christmas colors |
This quilt presented some interesting opportunities for quilting designs as well. Here's an article showing the designs and describing how I decided on what to quilt:
Quilting Design for a Tennessee Waltz Quilt
Download a pattern of the Tennessee Waltz Quilt Block
Download the Snowball Quilt Block
Happy Quilting!
Penny Halgren
Master Quilter
