I'm happy to finally be sharing my scrappy Snow Village quilt today!

Be prepared for lots of photos!

The timeline for this project was:

I started this project last January, made most of the house blocks at a Christmas in July party last summer, finished the quilt top at a retreat I went to in August, and finally bound it (and added the rest of the embellishments) in December.

The original Snow Village pattern is really simple so I thought it would be nice to add a little pizazz to the blocks with some embellishments!  The above block was my first one.  I love wreaths in windows at Christmastime so I embroidered some onto cream wool and then top stitched them onto the house to create windows.  The little pom poms reminded me of Christmas lights!

I found some brick-print fabric online, which I thought would be great for chimneys (check out the bottom of this post for a tutorial on how to add those).  And the fussy-cut Santa in a window was an easy embellishment.  This was such a fun project to just let loose on and be creative!

This house block (above - middle) is probably my favorite block.  I love the floral trim that someone brought to our Christmas in July party.  I used it at the bottom of some gray wool "windows" that I quilted diagonal grids on so that they looked like flower boxes.  Then I cut out a green wool circle with my pinking shears and sewed it to the front door so it looked like a wreath!

Linda Childs quilted it for me.  She is a longarm quilter based in Alpine, Utah.  I go to her whenever I need custom quilting and she always does an amazing job!  

I don't usually like surprises when it comes to longarm quilting but this time I told Linda to just "go to town" and have fun with the quilting.  I trusted her and didn't need or want anything particular.  She quilted each house block differently and each snowflake block with the same motif.  The sashing and border feature a variety of different snowflakes.  It's perfect!

I love looking around and finding new favorite details on the house blocks.  

I added the button "doorknobs" after it was quilted.

Can you see the black "smoke" I added to the chimney here (above)?  I added a piece of sashing to the block and then free-handed the smoke with my sewing machine.  I only did that on 3 blocks.

I added one of the super handy quilt labels I get from Everemblem to the back of the quilt.  I get the 2" cotton, fold-over, sew-in labels. If you go to their site, you'll have to pick a cotton label and customize it from there.  I've loved the ease of these labels.  It's time for me to get some new ones for 2024.

This quilt was so fun to make!  I have a lot of joy thinking of the memories I made with my quilt group as we worked on these together at our awesome Christmas in July party.  I also love looking at all the details on this quilt.  It's not very often that you want to inspect every square inch of a quilt to see the fun fabrics and quilting!

And finally, here's a quick little demo if you want to add chimneys to a scrappy Snow Village quilt.  These are so easy; they're just top stitched on (raw-edge applique!)

First, cut out a 1-1/2" x 3" rectangle for the chimney.  Take a square that will be used for the background corner of the roof unit and fold it in half diagonally to create a crease that will indicate your stitching line.  Place the chimney rectangle on the background square leaving 1/2" of space at the top.  You can move the rectangle right or left just make sure the bottom-right corner of the rectangle covers the crease by at least 1/4" as shown.

Pin and top-stitch the rectangle in place.  You don't need to top stitch the bottom of the rectangle as that will be sewn into the seam allowance when you attach this square to create the roof.  Trim the threads.

After you've top-stitched the chimney in place, place the square on one end of the roof rectangle.  Make sure the chimney will be lying in the correct position once it's sewn on.  Trim and press the seam allowances toward the roof.

That's it!  Easy peasy!

You can grab the Snow Village paper pattern, HERE.  

Or, the PDF pattern, HERE.

Click HERE to read all about the Christmas in July Party! 

Have you added embellishments to a quilt before?  I'd love to hear what you think about this project.

Thanks for stopping by!

A Quilty Christmas in July Party!

 This is my Snow Village quilt pattern.  It's very simple.  All the houses are the same.  And that is not like me.  I usually like scrappy quilts! The whole pattern had been screaming at me for a while to make it scrappy and add some embellishments.

So one day last January I finally tested my idea.  I embroidered some little wreaths on pieces of wool and top-stitched them to the front of a house for "windows".  I added in some little pom poms under the roof and planned on adding a button for a "door knob" on the front door. 

I thought, how fun would it be to make a bunch of house blocks with my local quilt group!?!  In fact, we could make a whole "Christmas in July" party out of it!  I checked with our guild president and she thought it was a fun idea too, so we made plans for our first annual Sassy Stitcher's Christmas in July party!

A few months later we met at our usual sew day spot and the fun began.  Everyone brought their favorite Christmas treat and an embellishment to share.

We even shared Christmas fabric!

We started off the day with a demo by yours truly.  I showed everyone how to add chimneys to the roof units.  See the bottom of THIS post for a tutorial on how to do that.

It was fun to see everyone's embellishing ideas, color palettes, and creativity!

And it wouldn't be a Christmas party without some Minute-To-Win-It games, right?

We had a "snowball toss" with big marshmallows and red Solo cups (played in teams).  Whoever had the most marshmallows in their cup by the end of the minute, won.

We built snowmen (the first team to finish wrapping someone with a roll of toilet paper, won). I'm pretty sure we had a hat and scarf they had to finish their "snowman" off with but don't have any pictures of that.  As you can see things got pretty wild; this was the funniest game of the 3 we played.

The last game was Name That Tune and we had prizes for all the winners of all the games, of course.

Even lunch was festive!

It was such a fun day that we decided we want to have a Christmas in July party every year!  We think it will be a fun tradition but we'll mix up the project and activities each year.  My friend and I are over the "traditions" committee so we're already scheming for that!  If you have any suggestions please leave them in the comment section below.  I'd love to hear them!

This post is so long already so I am going to share my finished scrappy Snow Village quilt in a separate post.  If you want to see it, click HERE.  And if you want to grab the Snow Village paper pattern, click HERE.  Or click HERE for the PDF pattern.

I hope this encourages you to have your own Christmas in July party with your quilty friends.  It was so fun and quilters love any excuse to sew, munch and mingle, am I right?   

Thanks for stopping by and happy quilting!