Make It Merry Assembly and FMQ

My goodness. It has been nearly a year since I posted about this quilt. My last post was 10/27/25 where I had completed the sixth month of the blocks and was ready to assembly them all. I'll admit to dragging my feet a bit when it came to assembling those 36 blocks in the center. Would my points meet where I wanted them to? I was nervous for no good reason. I methodically made three columns of six pair each, sewed the pairs into six rows, and then joined all the rows (minus the ribbon ties) into a a central section. Even those eight pesky perimeter blocks with a four patch as a diamond in each center from month FOUR trimmed up square with a bit of ruler magic before joining. This next photo was taken 11/20/25, and then my progress on this quilt came to a screeching halt. 

Apparently I added the border but never blogged about it because now I am deciding the FMQ. I have no photo assembled and with borders despite the fact that the flimsy hung over the railing in my living room for months. I reviewed my past posts to jog my memory and generated a diagram to help me decide how to FMQ the blocks. I knew I did not want to quilt an allover pattern.

• 06/14/25 Make It Merry Month ONE star with nine-patch centers (8)
• 06/21/25 Make It Merry Month TWO  3x3 grid stars and 4x4 grid stars (4+4)
• 08/16/25 Make It Merry Month THREE crosses (6+2)
• 09/01/25 Make It Merry Month FOUR on point four patch in center, (6) loops on bow (2)
• 10/24/25 Make It Merry Month FIVE  pluses for center (4), red central diamonds (4)
• 10/27/25 Make It Merry Month SIX ribbon tails (2)

I draw on clear sheet protectors with whiteboard markers to preview candidates for the FMQ. Month ONE block was the sawtooth star and I decided to echo-quilt the star shape. Echoing on only the inside seemed insufficient, so I also echoed ¼" on the outside as well. I started by FMQing the blocks in the green portion of the wreath with green thread beginning with the ONE star blocks,

A go-to FMQ shape of mine is petals from Angela Walters book. Petals worked with month THREE both singly and double outlined. 

Petals also seem to work with months FIVE (left) and FOUR (right) again with an extra outline of echoing to fill in the shape.

Here are the star on ONE and petal option on FIVE side by side having been FMQ'd.

Looking back at the crosses of the block from month THREE, I decided to try a design of my own — holly leaves in the arms of the X's — and it seemed to work.

I liked the holly experiment so much I planned for it on the block TWOs even they are are basically stars like the month ONE blocks. For the four TWOs at the wreath corners (left), I did one leaf and two half leafs, avoiding the diagonal white half of the block. These were a 4x4 grid. For the four TWOs at the extreme corners of the quilt itself (right), I did three complete leafs, omitting a fourth leaf that would extend into the white corner square. These were a 3x3 grid so I needed to guess more where the points of the holly leafs would fall. In practice I had to leave my cell phone on nearby displaying a photo of my clear auditioning sheet marked with critical dots as a reference.

Here is that holly motif stitched in the eight TWOs: four 4x4-grid TWOs at the wreath corners, and four 3x3-grid TWOs at the exterior corners. 

I pillow stitched inside the two bow loops. I did not agonize at all over this choice.

Now I pause again to make decisions. 

• How should I do the borders?
• Treat them as long lines, not a series of blocks?
• What pattern in the border? 
• Maybe something different in each of the three border fabrics? 
• The outermost fabric lends itself well to a diagonal grid. 
• I could do feathers ignoring the different fabric bands, but feathers seem too formal.
• Perhaps a curved band of holly leaves in lieu of feathers? 
• Should I switch to cream thread so contrasting green does not distract from the wreath?
• What about the ribbon and bow? Should they be in stitched in red?
• Perhaps just parallel lines in the red bow and what spacing? 

Maybe I can make my quilt labels while my mind is making these decisions. But what name shall I give this quilt....? Too many decisions!  Sigh. To be continued... and hopefully sooner than one year!

Bowl Cozies

At the Pleasanton Craft Fair I attended on Friday 9/25, I bought two kits to make bowl cozies. My friend raved about how great a cozy was for taking hot things out of the microwave. I made up one cozy and it took less than 30 minutes. Here are the steps to its assembly.

The kits comes with two 10" squares of cotton fabric and two 10" squares of a thin batting. The corners are rounded and notches or snipped out of each straight side. First stitch an X to keep the cotton and batting from sliding relative to each other. Then stitch darts out of the four notches in each half with ¼" seam allowance ". These darts shape the flat fabric into two bowl shapes.

Mate the two bowls, right sides together, stitch ⅜"around the perimeter leaving an opening, and then turn right sides out. Looking back I wished I'd left a bigger opening than the 2½" suggested. It would have made turning much easier with the bulk of the double batting. Last step is to top stitch all around the outer edge about ¼" in. The following photos show the bowl before turning and then both the inside and outside of the bowl after turning and top stitching.

They fit really nice, also. I do not know if there is a standard for bowls and I just happen to meet it with my bowls but the cozy fits super great.

Here is a summary of the pre-assembly dimensions for making another cozy without having another kit. Two squares for cotton and two squares for batting are 10" x 10" each. The notch for the dart is about 1½" wide and 1⅝" deep. The corners are rounded to a 1" radius, which is 2" diameter circle.

I made up the second kit and here is that cozy. The outside has the chickens and the inside has the swirls, but I suppose it can be used in reverse if preferred. This time I was wiser and left a larger opening to make turning right sides out easier. This project will be great for gifts and for nibbling away at my partial layer cakes.