I purchased a quilt kit last year from Shabby Fabrics that was made up of fat quarters from the sweetest Old Fashioned Christmas fabric collection to make the Picnic quilt pattern. I haven’t bought a quilt kit in years because I usually prefer to pick out my own fabrics, but this collection was just too cute not to pass up! I also loved how it looked in the Picnic pattern.

Old Fashioned Christmas Picnic Quilt by Amanda Castor of Material GIrl Quilts

Fast forward to this year and when I pulled this out of my stash last week, I REALLY wanted to see if I could get it done before Christmas this year. I had some PTO scheduled for this week, so I decided to go for it! I started cutting the fabric on Dec. 19th and finished hand stitching the binding on Dec. 22nd. If you follow me on Instagram, you have likely seen the progress in my stories.

Now, you may have noticed that my quilt looks different from the Picnic pattern and that’s because Allison designed this quilt so that the blocks are laid out on point. After I pieced all of my blocks, it was for the lap size version of her quilt and if I laid the blocks on point, I would end up cutting off a lot of the blocks around the outside edges. I love this fabric so much that I didn’t want to waste ANY of it! So, I decided to set the blocks straight and as a bonus I get a little larger quilt as well, finishing at 60” x 72”. My version only required 30 blocks of the 32 needed for the pattern’s lap sized version.

I admit that Allison’s on point pattern layout looks better than the straight layout, but I still think this way looks great. I also think the loopy quilting design almost looks like Christmas lights and it gives a fun texture. The kit also came with the perfect plaid print to use for the binding. Plaid and striped bindings are always a favorite for me.

If you’ve never purchased a quilt kit, I highly recommend them, especially if you struggle with choosing fabrics. Shabby Fabrics has a ton of beautiful kits that they’ve put together. They even have a beautiful kit using my Picadilly fabric collection that’s still in stock! Their quilt kits usually include fabric for the top and binding, but not the backing. They will often have backing fabric pre-selected that you can purchase to go with your kits (see this one for the Picadilly quilt). I purchased the backing fabric from them as well and thankfully it still worked out for my larger size quilt after the adjustments I made.

I’m so glad that I took the time to make this quilt just for me! I love the beautiful shades of green and red in this collection and now that it’s done I can snuggle under it while I watch my favorite Christmas movies (#1 is White Christmas!!).

Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope you have a wonderful holiday season with the ones you love.