A New Holiday Decoration

Hi everyone! It’s Cindy here. I wanted to show you a new Christmas decoration I made.

Christmas Dachshund Quilt

I started this in a class during the 2019 Genesee Valley QuiltFest. The class was taught by Cynthia England and it helps to demonstrate her “picture piecing” technique. This pattern is called “Santa Pooch” and you can buy the pattern and fabric pack from her.

Close up of Head

The finishing instructions call for you to embroider the eye on the dog and it has you outline the white parts of the Santa hat to help them stand out. Charlie and I thought the outlining fell a little flat so I purchased some fluffy fleece from JoAnn Fabrics and added it to the hat instead.

Detail of Head with Fleece

Adding the fleece was quite fiddly but I managed to get it attached and I love how it turned out. I also added the little bell to his scarf which was part of the kit. I did most of the quilting using my embroidery machine.

Close up of the quilting

I used two embroideries from Embroidery Online by OESD. The straight border is called “Snow Quilt Border” and the corner is “Snow Quilt Corner”. Since the corner embroidery was a triangle shape and I needed it to have square edges to match the straight border, I used my embroidery software to extract a bit from the straight border to square them up. I also extracted one of the snow flakes and used that randomly in the white background. You can click on the above image to see the details. I also stitched in the ditch around the dog and the gift boxes with invisible thread.

Christmas Dachshund hanging above the fireplace

The fabric pack that came with the pattern had a different border fabric that I wasn’t crazy for so I found this perfect purple fabric to use instead. I love how it turned out and it makes a lovely addition to our holiday decorations.