Christmas Sew-a-Long: Rainbow Falls

The Little Christmas Sew-a-Long features weekly holiday tutorials from some of my favorite quilty designers! This week is super exciting and features a collaboration between Rachel from Wren Collective and myself! When I first saw Rachel’s Rainbow Falls quilt the first thing I thought was how cute a block would be scaled down as an ornament. Luckily, she agreed with me! Rainbow falls uses curves for the rainbows, but those don’t scale so well so we are going to use a different technique.

The idea for Rainbow Falls came into my mind one day while unpacking my sewing room after moving to a new city. Moving is always hard for me, and I was really missing my friends and old home in that moment. I remember glancing down at some bright fabric I had recently purchased and thinking "these would make really cheerful rainbows!"

I wanted to be able to feature several fabrics in the quilt, so I decided to make the rainbows striped. I also wanted to introduce a non-curves element into the design, so I decided to sprinkle some HSTs in there. The end product was a really fun "exploding rainbows" or "rainbow confetti" effect that makes me smile whenever I see it.

— Rachel

This ornament works great for scraps! Here’s what you’ll need:

• 4 1” x 15” strips of fabric for your rainbows

• 3” square for your “confetti”

• Background Fabric - 3” x 21” strip, subcut to:

  • 3” square

  • 3” x 15” strip

  • 8 1” squares

• 5” x 5” Square of batting

• 5” x 5” Square of backing

• A print out of this triangle template

Let’s get started!

1) Make your confetti HSTS. We are going to use the 8 at a time half square triangle method using your 3” background square and your 3” confetti square.

Trim each of your HSTS to 1” - you’ll have quite a bit of excess, as I found that to be easier when trimming such small HSTs.

2) Make a pile of your HSTs and your 1” background squares. You will have 16 total. Arrange these into two rows with 8 blocks in each row, scattering the HST ‘confetti’ pieces among the plain blocks. Sew the blocks together, then sew the two rows together. This is your confetti strip!

2) Time to start that rainbow! Sew your 1” strips together horizontally, ending with the white 3” strip at the top. Press each strip as you add it to the dark side

3) Lay your triangle template out on the far left side of the strips sewn together in your previous step. Draw a line around the triangle, then repeat for the next four triangles, and cut them out. Make sure to carefully arrange the triangle templates so that they are straight so your rainbow sections line up!

4) Arrange your triangles as shown in the following diagram. Sew each of them together, carefully lining up the seams of each strip, then press the seams open.

5) Because these pieces are so small, there may be some size variance due to seam allowance. Because of that, you should have some extra background fabric around your rainbow. Line up your confetti strip with the bottom of the rainbow, right sides together, carefully matching up the center of your rainbow with the center of your confetti strip. Yeah, I know, this looks weird right now.

6) Trim your extra background fabric. If you’d like your ornament to be a rectangle you should have enough fabric to trim it as one, or you can make it a different shape like I did.

7) Lay your backing fabric right side down, then place your batting and the ornament on top. Quilt and bind, and then add a hanger with embroidery thread if you want!