First New Quilt Project of the Year

I've been chipping away at the UFO list thus far, but I got a hankering to start a new project a few months ago, and yes, I am just now getting it posted. :)  I've been working on it here and there and now its October and this is my my first new project of the year. I know - I'm a sad excuse for a quilter.

I have a long list of projects I want to start and since I haven't made a Christmas quilt, I decided this was the year to fix that. I saw this quilt last year and knew I wanted to make it. I pulled lots of reds and greens from my stash

and then broke my fabric fast for some background earlier this summer. I have some white with snowflakes, but I'm thinking I might prefer a cream like they used in the original. I tend to use a lot of the Moda Marbles Vanilla when I'm looking for a cream so I used the yard I had in my stash and picked up 3 yards at the little LQS. I'm using lots of scrappy reds and greens and keeping the background a constant and I haven't a clue as to where that picture is. :)

And then I pieced the little 6 patches

and the applique began:

I didn't want to use any fusible web as I wanted to keep the quilt soft and snuggable , so I used  the Sewline glue pen to keep the holly in place as I stitched. This is the first time I've used a glue pen and I found that I really liked it. Someone else likes it too:

In fact, she pretty much helped walk me through the entire process. Always willing to lend a paw:

Each little pair of holly leaves takes me about 10 minutes to applique so I'm able to pop behind my machine every now and then and add another block to the pile.

I've been playing around with the layout and getting blocks stitched together:

Its been so long since I started a new project that I almost forgot how good it feels!