The Blend Hip Holiday Challenge

This year our guild is participating in the Blend Fabrics challenge to create new quilty things from their Hip Holiday line designed by Josephine Kimberling. Each participating guild member has been provided with a ten by ten square of each print in the line. We are allowed to add additional fabric from the line, or any coordinating solid, and completed pieces are due this month.
Wonder of wonders, I completed my piece last week, a full two weeks before it was due at our guild meeting.
The best part of this challenge is that all we submit are pictures, which Blend Fabrics can use as they see fit. The finished pieces are ours to keep.
Those who have been following me for awhile know that I go all out to decorate for Christmas. Every room gets the full treatment, and I have quite an assortment of items I've made for this purpose. For this project I decided to make a table topper that I can use in the den on our coffee table. This is what I came up with for a design. The central focus print shows old woody station wagons headed hither and yon with Christmas trees strapped on top. That sure said "road trip" to me, so I used flying geese to suggest the round-about journey in search of the perfect tree.

Not satisfied to use a simple backing, I also decided to piece the back and echo the geese and blocks from the front. I'm glad I did that as I now have a reversible table topper that can work with different decorations depending on my mood. Also, the red side probably won't show so much of the dog hair that seems to embed itself into every textile around the house. Sigh.
When I got around to quilting it up, I had just finished a section of Leah Days' Free Motion Quilting a Sampler class on Craftsy.com. In the video class she demonstrated how to make the wandering clover design, so I had to work some of that into the project. Don't know if you can see it too well in this picture of the actual quilt, but it's a really easy and forgiving filler that is just a bit more interesting than a standard stipple. I've added a line drawing to show it a bit better. Every inch or so you pause in the stippling to add a three petaled clover. Note that even my line drawing isn't perfect. I have a few lines too close to each other and (gasp) I actually crossed my own line once or twice. It's OK. I've given myself permission not to be perfect. How about you? Give it a try

So that's it for today. The holiday sewing is officially underway!

Update: I've just published the pattern on Craftsy.com. Check it out here.