Lucy Boston

Monday, January 26, 2015

January Hopping! & giveaway

It is hopping cold and snowy here in central Ohio,
but the hopping I'm speaking of is a Blog Hop!!

Hello and welcome to my day to share on 
the Quilt Doodle Doodles Blog Hop!
My winter-y welcome is appropriate
for the quilt that was made for this hop...
My quilt finished at just 22 inches by 26 inches.
It's machine-pieced, with wool hand-appliqued for snowmen noses, roof snow, door wreath & bow, mug steam and skate blades.

Last year, Cindy at Quilt Doodle Doodles  
offered this as a free Block Of the Month pattern 
to make a block or row each month.
I jumped right in!
But, not wanting a bed-sized quilt (approx. 70"x82"),
I choose to downsize my blocks 
so I'd end up with a wall-hanging instead.

I do admit that I thought I was half-sizing the pattern, 
but ended up smaller than half 
because my brain kind of does it's own thing sometimes. :)

The patterns that Cindy offered 
had fabric squares cut at 2 1/2 inches, finishing at 2 inches.
So to make half-sized, I should have 
cut my squares at 1 1/2 inches to finish half-sized at 1 inch.
But, oops, 
I cut my squares at half the size of her cut-size, 
so I cut at 1 1/4 inches, to finish at 3/4 inch.
Besides the down-sizing,
I made a couple of other small changes...
One change was to not put in a row of Christmas-y light bulbs.  
I made them, and love them, 
but wanted this little quilt to stay Winter-y looking,
so I could leave it displayed longer than just the Christmas season.

The second change was instead of the light bulb row,
I used the scrap corners leftover from my Snowman row
 and made these cute little pinwheels!:
Yes, each little, eight piece, white pinwheel is 3/4 of an inch!

My final change was that I re-arranged the placement of my rows to space out my light-colored rows.
Then, on to my quilting.
The whole time I was making this little quilt, 
I was thinking I would hand-quilt it.
I even had it pin-basted in preparation of hand-quilting:
Pin-basted from the back.
WRONG!  Funny, funny me.
The little pieces in this quilt are only three-quarters of an inch!!
That means that the 
seam allowances cover most of the back of each little square!
NOT conducive to hand-quilting.
Instead of hand quilting,  I started by doing some stitch-in-the-ditch on my domestic machine.
Then I loaded it onto the long-arm machine
and did a little echo quilting around the snowmen heads and candies across the top, 
with some clouds and windy-swirls thrown in around the house and trees.
I love my little finish, 
and loved the sew-along qualities of the BOM offering from Cindy.
It was fun checking in each month with others making the same pattern, seeing their progress and creativity.

You can visit today's other bloggers on the January Hop, too:

My thanks to Cindy for offering this at no cost, for the great patterns, and hosting this Hop to share all the cuter-than-cute finishes.

Thanks to you also for visiting and doing some January Hopping!

PS - Cindy is offering a new B.O.M. for this year, so visit her blog to check it out!!
ALSO, she's having a giveaway, so when you visit her blog - just leave her a comment to enter.

PPS - Leave a comment here for me,
as I'm doing a little giveaway, too!!  
I have an extra, little string of snowmen to share!

17 comments:

  1. What a great idea to make it smaller to turn it into a wall hanging. The little pinwheels are so cute. Love the mouths on the snowmen. Adorable!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like your wall hanging and the changes you made! I don't know how you worked with such small squares every month - I had trouble with the 2 1/2 inch squares. Great job!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow aren't you brave to make such a bold change to itty bitty blocks, great job

    ReplyDelete
  4. I absolutely love your tiny version of this quilt! The tiny pinwheels are adorable....along with everything else! Nicely done!
    Ps....it's a small world....I am in central Ohio as well! Go Bucks!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think it's precious. I also think making it so small made it harder to piece!! Good for you. The mix of fabrics is wonderful. LeeAnna at not afraid of color
    still trying to get it to grow to kind size for our bed

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wow, that's so tiny! What a great job on this. I'm amazed by it. The whole thing is just adorable. Congratulations on a great finish!

    ReplyDelete
  7. What a pretty quilt--somehow I missed doing this one!!
    and as for a row of snowmen--well--it would go right along fine here today as it is snowing outside!!
    smiles, diandmissgracie

    ReplyDelete
  8. What a nice surprise because I didn't see you listed in the hop until now! Your little quilt is darling and love the little pinwheel row (and that you didn't waste those little triangles)! You did an excellent job-- it's a little more difficult working with tiny squares like you did!

    ReplyDelete
  9. OK, I am in love! I work tiny so this one just thrills me. What a special little quilt.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I love your snowmen expressions; so original and cute. You did lovely work on this quilt. Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I love that you challenged yourself with a smaller sized quilt. Your quilt turned out beautiful, thank you for quilting with me over the last year :)

    ReplyDelete
  12. I'm impressed with your down-sized version. Such small blocks aren't easy. Nice job.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I love your wall hanging! It's been fun seeing all the embellishments and changes you all have made.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I like your smaller version. Good idea!

    ReplyDelete
  15. I've only made two quilts, but have embroidered squares for my cousin to make baby quilts. I do like the wall hanging idea...I like smaller projects!

    ReplyDelete