The 1987 Land's End Christmas Catalog Quilt Project

Many years ago, the good women of the Land’s End company designed and made a Christmas sampler quilt. They used eight fabrics in five colors. And then they offered the pattern for sale in their catalog.

I was not quilting at the time, but I fell in love with it and just knew one day I would quilt and I would make this wonderful thing.

My mother gave me the pattern for Christmas and I spent lots of time planning and drawing quarter inch seams around copies of all the templates. I calculated costs and even bought backing. The most expensive fabric under consideration at the time was $2.75 per yard.

But time went by and I decided I was not really interested in sampler quilts. Yet the pattern remained on the shelf as inspiration. And every once in awhile I would think about it, but not enough to pull it out a make it.

Several years ago at a college homecoming weekend I happened to mention to my friend Keith that I was quilting. At this point he mentioned that he had always wanted to have a particular quilt made.

“The 1987 Land’s End Christmas Quilt,” I said.

“How did you know?” he asked.

“I just did,” I replied. Well, what other quilt would it be? Still, it was a pretty good guess. And he had the pattern, too.

Yes, but did he still have the cover from the original catalog with the accompanying article?

I didn’t think so.

If you click on the picture I believe you can actually read most of it. They were so proud of their work.

Around mid-August I got a message from Keith saying that he was still interested in having that quilt made and that he could have some ladies in Austin make it for him. But he knew it was something I wanted to do once upon a time and wondered if I might be interested in taking it on.

I was at the critical point of putting together the last of the APQ stars and said I would have to study the pattern and get back to him. Those last three stars were extra hard because I wanted to drop everything and read through the Land’s End packet.

And so I have decided to take on this project – finally. I will be chronicling the progress on the blog so Keith and anyone else who is interested can follow along. All I ask is that you let me finish the quilt before making any big movie offers.