Toile, Holiday-Style!

The Christmas carols have started! (Okay, who are we kidding...they started the day after Thanksgiving and holiday merchandise has been in stores since before Halloween!) 

But...now that we've reached December, it's much easier to get in the holiday mood. 

And nothing does that more than great Christmas fabric (Christmas in the Woods) used in a beautiful quilt, like Tony Jacobson's "Santa in the Woods," featured in Love of Quilting magazine.

"Santa in the Woods" by Tony Jacobson;
featured in Fons & Porter's Love of Quilting November/December 2013

Q. What attracted you to the Christmas in the Woods toile prints?

Tony: I've always liked toile prints and I liked the aspect of a Santa print that wasn't the obvious Santa carrying a sack of toys or with a child on his lap.

It's more like Santa in his off time. It makes it a little more "winter" than just Christmas, to me.

Q. Why did you decide to vary the centers of the red and green blocks?

Tony: I wanted a nice sized area to show off the Santa print so there would be a better chance of seeing a bit of the cabin, deer, and Santa all in one block. The green toile is more of an allover print so it wasn't as necessary to have the large area to show. I also wanted to have the variation in the star block.

Q. What is your favorite part of the quilt?

Tony: I think the overall design of the quilt melds together well and gives that warm and comfortable feeling we're all looking for as the temperatures in Iowa fall below the freezing mark. It will be nice to cuddle under this quilt while sitting on the sofa with all the four-legged kids around, watching our favorite Christmas shows.

Q. Can you talk about how it was machine quilted?

Tony: I decided that I wanted to keep the quilting consistent for all of the blocks, so I just mimicked the in-the-ditch quilting I was doing in the green star blocks over the red star blocks. I wanted to keep the pattern simple so it wouldn't fight with the toile print.

See the entire Christmas in the Woods collection here.

Find the kit for this project here.

Find Love of Quilting here.