I am a bad aunt.

My family exchanges Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve every year. It’s been this way for as long as I can remember – since I was just a kid, really. So you’d think that with a hard deadline date like that, it couldn’t sneak up on me, but it does, far too often. This year, on the 22nd of December, it hit me. Hard. I’d forgotten to buy a gift for one of the kids. In my defense, this is a “new” kid to our family, my brother’s 10 month old son. I don’t see him often, and we didn’t buy gifts for all the kids this year (we drew name for the six older kids, then my sister took one of the babies (my brother has two) and I took the other). So it was easy to forget the gift for the youngest member of the family.

Told ya, I’m a bad aunt. There’s no justifying it, but I’ll try!

Anyway, on the 22nd, I realized I needed a gift. We had spent our Christmas budget (plus some) so I really didn’t have much in the way of money to buy something. So I started digging around in my stash to see what I could find. Now, this is where the rubber meets the road for a quilter – when things get tough, do you have the fabric to pull something together that’s brilliant without having to spend any additional money? Fortunately, my stash came through for me with flying colors! Don’t believe me? Judge for yourself …

I love the way it turned out. I used Sandy Gervais’ (for Moda) Nautical and Nice charm pack and jelly roll for the colorful blocks – I bought it at the beginning of summer, just because I liked it. The large cream colored blocks were from some fabric I’ve had for at least five years, probably much longer. I backed it with a seashell tone-on-tone print that I’ve had just as long.

It has inspired me to purchase more charm packs this year, possibly two at a time, so I can always be prepared with quick quilting ideas when presented with a last minute need. Making this quilt in two days (yes, it was done by Christmas Eve morning)  has further inspired me to make a couple of quilts to keep for last minute gifts that don’t require a lot of hustle. LOL I have two quilt tops that should be quilted this coming year; I think I’ll keep them for this purpose, and hopefully have them completed before the end of March, just in case.