Throwback Thursday: Frostbite

I saw this little lap quilt or wallhanging in a quilt shop in a mall in Lethbridge, Alberta, in 2003 or 2004.  Too cute!  Too unique! Sold! I bought the pattern, and the fabrics right there and then to create my own, which I finished in September 2004.  I have mainly used it as a perched-on-the-top-of-the-couch quilt.

The pine cones are ones I've found on my walks with Rocco around the 'hood. They come like that with the white tips!  They're on huge pine trees, trees with 14" long needles! I think they are Slash Pines, and native to this area, abundant before the Europeans came and messed with things...why do white men always need to mess with things... nvm I'll just stick with my white snowmen for now.

And thus began a love affair with wool appliqué, and wool felting.  I made a couple of table centre mats out of wool, and then designed one of my own.  I kitted and taught the class for the one I designed at a Professional Development Day for teachers back when sessions on personal wellness were on offer.  When I left teaching, only sessions pertinent to subject area and education-related were allowed (insert grouchy face).

Back to frost bitten snowman faces.  It's been folded up in the closet for more than a year, so excuse the wrinkles.  Most of my Christmas quilts are here in Florida, so since we stayed home in Kingsville for Christmas this year, it didn't get used. Insert sad face.

Isn't it just the cutest? Get it? Frost bite?

I hand-appliquéd all the snowman heads with a blanket stitch using #8 coton perlé in black.  I used real bandaids and machine-blanket-stitched them on!  The noses are appliquéd with a running stitch.  This was my first experience with brushed cottons.  I FMQ-ed the snowflakes on the snowman heads.

I wish the sparkle and shimmer of the thread showed up better

All the quilting is done with Sulky Holoshimmer thread on my Bernina. For the line of snowflakes under the appliquéd letters, I think I drew the line down the centre, and marked the centre of the snowflakes with a vertical line, and then just went for it.

Under the Ott-Lite, trying to show the stitching in the border

This is before Leah Day and Angela Walters and all the online fabulous resources. I did have Kathy Sandbach's book for inspiration, however.  I didn't have a clue how to do swirls, but I wanted swirls of wind look in the borders and bigger fancier snowflakes so hopefully you can kind of see them in the photo above. I drew the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines of the snowflakes, then FMQ-ed them and the little swoops around each one.  I did a jigsaw-style meander in the block backgrounds.

The back.  I sewed pieces together for down the side edge as the one piece of brushed cotton wasn't quite wide enough, and sewed the label into that strip as part of the backing.  I also put a sleeve on it as I do hang it sometimes.

Close-up of label

Hmm, didn't have a lot to say on the label really did I?!

It's really snuggly and soft.

Afterthought to the photo below:  I realized the morning after writing this post, so the day it published, that right around the finishing of this quilt, in September, 2004, my life was not exactly taking a right angle turn per se, but was getting to the right angle turn with a bit of a sharp curve...  What I mean is that Dayna, age 16, went to Houston TX in August 2004 with her good friend for 2.5 weeks (that's a story for another time) and during that trip got taken to Anna Maria Island, FL, for a few days.  That sparked our first family "fancy" vacation (actually flying somewhere, not camping) to stay in that very same condo on Anna Maria Island at Christmas that year.  Here I am, 11 and a bit years after that fateful life-changing vacation, photographing the quilt, that now lives in Florida... Love it when the fibers tell stories.

I think it's kind of funny that I'm photographing it on green grass today, so I had to take a shade shot by one of our palm trees:

The quilt measures 44.5 X 50.5"

That's a new bed that MacGyver spent a good chunk of his day digging and planting.  He put a couple of new things in there and in an extension of the front bed he did last week.  He says digging in this soil is a dream: it's pretty much pure sand.  He moved the jasmine and bromeliads from the front to this side bed.

Interesting that I'm currently working on a wool appliqué project!  This is being blanket-stitched appliquéd too, with coton perlé #8 in ivory.  It is inspired by a quilt I saw hanging at a Creative Stitches Show I went to not long after the snowman quilt was either done or in the works.  I sketched it from my head (no smart phone quick snaps then) when I got home.  I have been on the hunt for a couple of years to find the right shade of white/ivory wool to felt.  I finally found some in Guildcrafters in Detroit last summer.

Note the Crinum lily behind the quilt.  It blooms all year and is HUGE and smells DIVINE!  I call it a Jurassic Park lily, ha.  Such interesting and different southern flora compared to northern...

It takes a good 45-50 minutes to drive to yoga in Sarasota, so I can get one petal stitched on the way up and another on the way back home.  Don't worry: I'm not stitching and driving! LOL

I had to wait until things calmed down a bit around here to take these photos.  I was dog-sitting while Brandy's human, John, was at a Spring Training ball game with MacGyver.  Not a lot of sewing got done, needless to say, but we did all soak up some rays while I read my book and had my tea!

Panting pibbles, cooling their tummies on the tile

We girls (well Rocco may as well be a girl, he can be such a little princess) had a good afternoon together!

Linking up with Jen at A Quarter Inch From the Edge.  Lots of blasts from the past with great stories, so be sure to pop over there.