Now that the Enigmatic quilt is officially available to the general public - I knew I had to feature it for December Toad-spo! Although this pattern doesn't scream Christmas, it sure does look cute in 'Christmasy' colors. I wanted to create a holiday palette that could be appreciated year round, and what better combination than the timeless duo of classic green and pink! Whenever I find myself in need of a foolproof color scheme, green and pink are my go-to choices. As complementary colors, they effortlessly harmonize, especially when strategically applied.

I experimented with various hues and values to create a slightly whimsical palette, and to add a playful touch, I introduced a subtle yellow that serves as a captivating pop of color. This yellow infusion adds just the right amount of warmth to round out the December quilt color palette, making it feel perfectly balanced.

Our December Toad-Spo Enigmatic quilt was made entirely of Art Gallery Fabrics print and solid fabrics! On the top, we went with Pure Solids in the colors Sweet Macadamia, Blossomed, Weathered Brick, Miami Sunset, Honey, Forest Night, and Rosemary. If you'd like to make this quilt on your own, you can buy the quilt kit here!

You’ll notice that the quilt design separates the required colors into 2 groups or color families. Our December Toad-Spo fabrics can be simplified into green (Colors 1-3) and pink (Colors 4-6) color families. My favorite way to plug colors into this quilt is to use a darker tone for Color 2 and Color 5, a lighter tone for Color 1 and Color 4, and a pop of color for Color 3 and Color 6. If you look at the green blocks, you’ll see that the darker tone is the Forest Night solid fabric and the lighter tone is Rosemary. The pop of color we chose for this color family is the bright yellow color - Honey. While this is not a required method of pulling fabric for this quilt pattern, it’s one of my favorite ways of playing with the colors!

The piecing instructions for this quilt pattern are fairly simple and are totally accomplishable by a beginner quilter. The main two piecing blocks/techniques you'll need to sew are half square triangles (HSTs) and snowball corners. Snowball corners (seen in the photos below) below have many names in the quilting world. You might also hear this piecing technique referred to as “stitch and flip” or simply “diagonal seams,” but they mean the same thing!

While the Enigmatic quilt blocks look great on their own, the magic starts to happen when you combine them together! This is where your color families start to play off of each other within the quilt and make the design come alive!

One of my favorite things to do when sewing a quilt top is to play around with the blocks before they are sewn together! It is so much fun to see the many alternate designs that could be made with the quilt blocks. Check out the photos below to see how unique the design of these blocks can look when you lay them out a little differently! And if you snap a picture of your layouts, you can even give yourself a new phone wallpaper too! I might have that third picture below as a phone background right now… 

Enigmatic is a super quick make that can easily be increased or decreased in size by adding or subtracting quilt blocks! With the color theory lesson at the beginning of this quilt pattern, you're sure to make a timeless quilt that you'll love forever!

Since the theme of this quilt is timeless and subtle Christmas, we knew we had to pick just the right longarm quilting pantograph. We toyed around with the idea of making the pantograph be an overtly Christmas design, but ultimately decided it, too, should be subtle in its Christmas design. The goal was to make sure this is something that could be loved during the holiday season, but could be left out well after and still fit in! We decided to go with the pantograph called Twinkle Toes designed by Karlee Porter. I love the diamond sparkley shape in this quilting design - it reminds me so much of snowflakes!