Winterkist Wonderland

A few months ago I got the chance to participate in a Fat Quarterly Design Challenge using Winterkist, Monica Solorio-Snow's wildly popular new Christmas collection. The Fat Quarterly Christmas Issue which includes my project was just released, so I thought I'd share a few pictures of the Winterkist Wonderland I made for my girls.

For the challenge, I received a small stack of fabric including red, green, white, and dark gray prints -- including one piece with those cute little gnomes. It sounds like an easy color palette, but actually it was a little tricky trying to decide how best to use everything. Even though I had first envisioned a simple reading rug with pockets, the project quickly grew into an interactive play mat. I picked up some Kona cotton in Bahama blue to use as a background (my usual stand-bys didn't work this time -- Kona Coal was too dark and Kona White was just too pale), and spent several days figuring out how I wanted to arrange the rest of the fabrics in the piece. The landscape was soon covered with pockets masquerading as trees and a snow fort, and I used interfacing to make sturdy gnomes and snowballs that would easily fit inside. My girls can now play everything from tic-tac-toe to snow tag to "The Mystery of the Missing Snowball" with these little guys.

The quilt is minimally hand quilted around three of the pockets with red embroidery thread, and I pieced together red prints with Kona White to make a candy cane binding.

The gray prints were used to make ties so that the mat can be rolled up easily for travel. I couldn't resist adding a large gnome to the back as a fun decoration.

My thanks to Lynne at Lily's Quilts for giving me the chance to be a part of this issue's Designer Challenge. You'll definitely want to pick up this amazing Christmas issue. I've just started paging through my copy this morning, and the projects are gorgeous!