I love it when I am fabric shopping and something jumps off the shelf and into my arms because it triggers a lever in my brain and it is absolutely dead-spot on — exactly what I needed for a long-dreamt of project. Does this happen to you too?

This is the story of such a fabric.

Are you as obsessed with this Buffalo Check by Essentially Yours from Moda as I am? I found it at Red Rooster Fabrics in Dublin, Ohio when I was visiting with Cindy this summer. What is the source of the obsession? Step into the past with me….

Reason #1 why I am obsessed with this fabric:

When Cindy and I were growing up in the farmhouse, there was an old hunting coat of my father’s that hung in a cedar closet in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

He had long outgrown this special coat by the 1970’s and it was too masculine and structured for the fashion of the day, so it never entered our minds to appropriate it for our own uses. But the quality was so good that my mother just never got around to throwing it away (and let me tell you, she was/is a prodigious thrower-awayer). So it stayed in the closet and became a reliable touchstone whenever I would return to the farm for visits in my wild-west days. It is still there as I type this blog post. The buffalo check instantly reminded me of this coat.

Reason #2 why I am obsessed with this fabric:

Christmas things just accumulate in my home. There is a store in nearby Cuba, NY, called By the Light of the Moon. It has the most adorable, elegant and unique items year-round, and the year I started quilting I found a Mary Lake-Thompson cotton hand towel at BTLOTM that I just knew would make a cute quilt something. So I bought two, gave one away as a Christmas stocking gift, and then proceeded to move the other one around in my quilting fabric stash for some time.

I don’t know if BTLOTM still has this item, but you can find it here.

Then I saw the Buffalo plaid and everything made sense: I had to make a Santa’s coat quilted wall hanging.

Well, truth be told, I dreamed it and Cindy made it!

Cindy and I trimmed the tea towel to highlight Santa’s cheeky wink. We found faux fur and big black buttons at Joann to trim the coat. I had some leftover metallic fabric to make the belt buckle and we used scraps of green to make the vanity buckle frame. A couple of simple rectangles of Buffalo Check and a strip of Kona Black were used to make the coat assembly easy.

Cindy did the final assembly and added a hanging sleeve and as quick as Bob’s your uncle, we have a new Christmas pattern. It’s cold enough for a coat here in New York and it even snowed a bit last night, so I’d say that this is timed perfectly! I might even run over to the farm and see if that coat fits me now…

Santa’s coat quilted wall hanging pattern. Enjoy!

You will also find this pattern posted on the FAVE Quilts website.  If you are searching for just the right Christmas quilt design, you will be sure to find it on FAVE Quilts.  Stop by to take a look at all the FREE quilt patterns.