Confession time: I've had a "Christmas tree" panto sketch in my design software for well over a year now, but it just wasn't working. Cut to a few weeks ago: I became inspired by the new pattern, Tree Rows, designed by Emily Dennis of Quilty Love.

I love the SUPER simplified patchwork of the trees, and that made me take a fresh look at the panto design I'd been working on. I removed a bauble, deleted a few branches, and made the boughs curvy. Suddenly, it was a panto I wanted to use on this very quilt pattern.



As a panto designer, I'm very much drawn to graphically interesting quilting and the texture it produces. I adore the pillowy softness that comes from the transitions between trees; it feels a bit unexpected for a tree panto. In fact, I don't think the overall texture reads immediately as "tree", and maybe that's what I like most about it.



When tiled across a quilt, the shapes interlock in a soft, flowing way.

This design would, of course, be appropriate for Christmas ...

As so often happens, this design evolved as I was working on it. I didn't imagine it as a holiday-adjacent design at first, but I thought it so closely resembled a poinsettia that I leaned into that theme when naming it. Of course, it doesn't have to be used for Christmas, holiday, or winter-themed quilts, but I think it would work well for them.



The circles positioned between the star shapes made me think of a tufted cushion on a couch or a headboard—so much so that I was THISCLOSE to naming the design Hangin' Tuft. This would have been funny, but it made little sense—as if this had stopped me before.



I also started with just the inside star shape between the circles, but I couldn't leave all that space between the motifs, so I employed some echoing to help fill in the gaps and enhance the curves.





I'm much more happy with the evenly balanced result. Echoing almost always "works" whether you are hand-guiding and need to travel to a different part of the quilt, or in a pantogra...