Festive Feathered Forest

Before we were married, my wife purchased a flannel Christmas quilt at a shop in Franklin, TN. This quilt is no longer in our possession, but here's an old photo showing it in the background:

For some time I've thought about making a similar quilt. I even once suggested to Robert Kaufman that they produce a set of Mammoth flannel plaids in Christmas colors. When I saw the Warp + Weft Holiday Yarn Dyes from Modern Quilt Studio, I thought I'd give this quilt a try with those fabrics.

I drafted my own design for the trees, based on a feathered star approach. The "branches" and "stars" are paper pieced; the body of the trees and the large red triangles are cut using a single acrylic template which I made using our library's laser cutter.

I learned I should make a test block or two before committing a design to acrylic. There are a couple of small adjustments I wish I could have made to the template.

I used 8 green fabrics; with 53 trees, I was able to make each tree unique with regards to the fabric pairings.

Most of these fabrics had a minimum purchase of one yard each, which is quite a bit more than I needed. I used leftover fabric to piece the back.

The border seemed a bit wonky from the start. I quilted it with a feather motif, which made it even more wonky.

I could tell this quilt would need to be blocked. I normally block after binding, but this one was so out of shape I blocked it first. I used a laser square to help guide my pinning, and straightened the inner border first.

Here's the finished border:

And finally, here's the label: