Snowman Quilt Blocks

I've been taking it kind of easy on the crafty front lately.  Those lazy kind of feelings usually lead me to stitch quilt blocks for charity.  I picked two snowman designs for a non-Holiday snowman quilt this time.  These will go the World Of Charity Stitching.  Both photos were taken in my new iPad-mini.  I'm still learning how to work with it, but it is certainly  performing much better than my old Nook tablet!

The first is an older design by San-Man Originals.  It was called "Winter Quaker" and was part of a free SAL in 2010.  I had that mauve fabric lying around so I modified the colors a little to be sure I had enough contrast.  It's a little different from the type of design that comes to mind when you say "stitch a snowman".  I like that because I think it gives nice variety to the finished quilts.

The second design is Pam Kellogg's ornament from the 2006 JCS Ornament issue.   I used to stitch her designs like it was nothing.  Now I find this kind of stitching to be quite the project!  The design as printed has tons of color changes and the chart in the magazine was really tiny.  I'm glad I stuck with it, because it is really cute.  The snowflakes on the upper left were my addition to replace the space for a date.  I used some snowflakes from Sue Hillis' Swirly Snow freebie that you can find here on 123 Stitch.  The fabric is cornflower blue 28ct Jobelan.  And you could not pay me enough to show you what the back looks like!

After reading one of Vonna's blog posts about using a hoop, I decided to take one of my old wooden hoops and wrap the inner ring with bias tape.  I used Mary Corbett's tutorial for this.  You can find it here.   I used it to stitch the snowman above and I found that I really liked it.  Q-snaps are too much for a smaller piece.. too heavy and you need too much extra fabric.  My spring tension hoops sag near the handles and really leave hoop marks that are hard to iron out.  I put the fabric in the hoop 'backwards' so that the stitching is recessed.  It means my hands mostly only touch the back of the fabric so it stays cleaner.  I think I'm sold on this method for now.  Here's a picture of my little helper.