"Snowbird" Snowmen

The snowmen I hand-embroidered into 22 blocks were determined to "go south for the winter" before becoming a bona fide quilt. Well, they got their way... three years and four months after being started, they saw their winter finish in sunny Florida! Yep, it was September 2009 when I first spied this Crabapple Hill pattern and thought I'd make a winter quilt for our home in Iowa. Ha! Little did I know.

In keeping with the winter theme of the embroideries, it's quilted with lots of snowflakes...

... or icycles. Whatever was appropriate for each block.

In each block, I began by echo-quilting around and inside the main shapes, adding snow mounds at the bottom where appropriate.

I'll have to say that I quilted a heck of a lot of snowflakes! I tried to occasionally change-up the style of each one.

48" X 71-1/2"

I treated the red and aqua borders as one, channel quilting "piano keys" three inches apart. Each channel has one large snowflake quilted into it. They're difficult to see on the busy aqua print, but I knew they were needed to hold the quilt together.

Each of the four corners has a stylized "S" swirl that seemed appropriate for the many snowmen in the quilt.

 

I carefully custom-quilted (on my Bernina Aurora 440, without the BSR) this because many hand-embroidered quilts are seen with an all-over meander or stipple design. That kind of quilting not only disregards the beautiful handwork, but it does nothing to enhance each segment of embroidery.

Thanks to friend Cindy for letting me "borrow" the palm tree in her front yard... the lucky duck!

I'm tickled to call this, 2013 finish #3! Linda

Stats
Hand-embroidered: DMC embroidery floss
Decorative machine herringbone stitch between blocks: two strands, Aurifil #50, turquoise
Red border fabric: Denyse Schmidt, Picnic Gingham Stripe
Aqua snowflake border fabric: Riley Blake, Santa's Workshop
Batting: Hobb 80/20
Piecing and quilting thread: Aurifil #50, white