A Christmas Modern Postage Stamp Quilt

For the Penny Quiltalong, I picked up a fat quarter bundle of Rifle Paper Co Holiday Classics fabrics to use for one of my quilts. Since the bundle contained lots of fat quarters, it was more than I needed for the project so I decided that I needed to use the leftover FQers plus scraps from my quilt to make one of my favorite patterns: the Modern Postage Stamp Quilt.

I love this pattern because it is so useful. It's a great leader/ender project, it's perfect for project leftovers, and it just works with any fabric combination. You can see my previous versions of this pattern here, here, here, and here. 

This quilt included a couple of different firsts for me: 

First time using this super fuzzy minky for the back. I have had this fabric in my stash for at least a couple of years and have been nervous to use it because I knew it would shed (it does!) and I was worried about how it would quilt on my machine. 

Here are a few items to note about using this kind of minky:

• Yes, it will shed everywhere but the wonderful, kind people of Instagram helped with some great tips. 
• Keep a lint roller handy (I use this giant one).
• Vacuum the minky after cutting and before using it.
• Put the minky in the dryer on low heat. I had some doubts about this because I was just picturing opening my dryer and having warm minky fluff fly over my house, but it all ended up nicely in the lint trap and this actually worked extremely well.
• Keep the selvage attached until after quilting. Since I am going to trim my quilt after quilting anyway, I just left the selvage attached so those sides wouldn't release fluff into the world while I was working on them.
• I put packing tape along the non-selvage sides of my quilt while I was quilting. This made it mildly annoying to work with but did help.
• I have heard some complaints about tension issues or thread breaking. My bobbin thread did break once while was quilting (this is not normal for me), but otherwise I didn't have any issues.
• Even though I basted thoroughly, I did have just a little bit of shifting. Not enough to create any problems, but I noticed it. Make sure to baste your quilt well to minimize this.
• I normally quilt my lines 2-3" apart in a grid and I did them just a little further apart - probably closer to 3-4". I didn't want to lose the soft minky-ness.

Other than that, it was pretty similar to working with regular minky. I already ordered 3 more cuts of this fabric because now ALL of my kids want quilts made with it. For my quilt, I was using Beary Soft Minky from Michael Miller, but Shannon Fabrics also makes a similar fabric. I actually picked up this, this, and this for quilts for my kids.

The pink might seem like an odd choice for a Christmas quilt, but these prints actually have little accents of pink in them and I love how it turned out. 

It is also the first time that I have sewn the binding on backwards. Normally, I sew the binding to the front of my quilt with my machine and then hand sew it to the back. Since I wasn't really interested into trying to hand sew into this crazy minky fuzz, I did it the reverse - it's fun to see the big stitches from the front of the quilt!

Not really a first, but for the first time in a LONG TIME, I washed this quilt right after photographing it and then immediately started using it. It is very warm and cozy!

If you would like to make your own version of the Modern Postage Stamp Quilt, you can pick up a copy in the shop!