January Snowmen and Snowflakes Completed

The assembly and piecing for this wall hanging is described in my post for 1/31/26. This post is about the quilting and finishing. Like a fine wine, a quilt needs to age before its destined FMQ pattern reveals itself. For this banner the snowflake blocks were immediately obvious to me. I quilted the snowflakes first with radiating parallel diagonal channels. Later I went back and stitched cross bars across the spokes of the snowflake where the color changed between light and dark in the Nordic stripe. The snowman blocks were harder for me to decide.

Not wanting to interfere with the background print on the snowman, at first, I did simple loops like a lower case script e, think the pattern would complement the writing. But my loops were uneven, looked sloppy, and did not give the effect I wanted. I stopped after two rows and picked out the mess. I then quilted the background behind the snowmen with scallops using my Handiquilter ruler to represent hills of snow, like the moguls on a ski slope. I added rows of snowflakes on his collar and hat. I straight-stitched around the nose, mouth, and eyes to provide some anchoring points, but left the rest of the face non-quilted.

The outside navy snowflake border gave me the most trouble deciding what to do. I tried a fairly open meander, tracing a path around the snowflakes. I sewed about 6" and did not like it. I fooled myself into thinking maybe it would look better when I did more. I meandered around all four sides in a loose path tracing around the snowflakes. Compared to my other neat, controlled FMQ selections, it looked far beyond the euphemism "organic"; it was simply untidy, messy, and ugly. I actually spent over three hours painstakingly picking out all those stitches in that border. I used the 3" half circle of my clamshell ruler to add more precise stitching in the borders and was much happier with the results. I filled in the four corners with ordinary circles. I call them the snowballs in keeping with the January theme. 

The backing fabric is a darker colorway of the background fabric on the snowmen. I find the deep navy version more striking and the words easier to read. The cursive carefree writing is quite jolly with phrases such as "Winter wonderland", "frozen flurries", "Magical moments Together", "Snowflakes", "sledding", and "hot cocoa". 

One label on a back corner reflects my initials DIC and the year of completion as 2026. The month January is for the theme of the wall hanging and not specifically the month I finished it. The other label on the opposite back corner reflects the descriptive, although not very imaginative, name of the quilt as Snowmen and Snowflakes. Up at the top is a narrow hanging sleeve for a wire quilt display hanger I bought to rotate for use with each of the twelve banners.

Here is the completed Snowmen and Snowflakes, hung up on the wall beside the entrance to my sewing room. This chosen spot is not as visible to house visitors, but it gives me a little pang of pleasure to see it daily. It is low enough to swap out monthly. This is my fourth banner completed in this Shabby Fabric series. Each finishes 31" x 31". So far I have completed Roses and Pansies for May (9/11/25), Strawberries for June (9/6/25), and Bees and Sunflowers for August (9/21/25). Bunnies and Carrots for April is pieced but not yet quilted.

VAN the Wooble

Those Woobles commercials are positively everywhere! Before these amigurumi crochet kits became so prolific though, my grandson Isaiah in Oklahoma developed a strong liking for them. The first one I made for him was a pink Strawberry the Axolotl, seen in my post dated 1/22/24. I also made him a green Creeper from the Minecraft game, seen in my post for 10/15/25. This past Christmas Isaiah researched the Wooble website and told me his five top choices. VAN was the  highest on his list and so I crocheted it for him.

The kits are a bit pricey but the contents and the excellent instructional videos are well worth it. The yarn is heavy enough so the working gage is large enough to see, and learn, especially for old grandma eyes. Neither does the yarn split, making it great for beginner and seasoned crocheters as well. I also love the special touch of a custom crochet hook with an easy grip handle with images dedicated to the figure being crocheted. The hook is shown in the foreground of the following image. Since I placed an order around Christmas time, the kit also came with a gift bag for giving. My grandson is going to be excited about this extra surprise. The back of the bag specifically says THE WOOBLES.

So much does Isaiah like the Woobles, he asked if he could learn to crochet. His mom enrolled him in a local class and he intently worked away, focusing hard to learn. I suspect watching a Wooble video would be even better and help him more.

Van is super cute, though I cannot explain the appeal. The two hemispheres were a cinch to make. The two-tone horn was a challenge. It was pretty small, made separately, and then sewn on. With this itty bitty horn, I learned a handy skill, how and when to change colors in a single crochet or an increase when working with two colors at once. Instructions were even detailed enough that I knew between which rows and how many stitches between points to embroider the facial features. 

Isaiah is 10½ years old, so I have a limited amount of time before he reaches those hard-to-please teen years. I have more of these kits to crochet for Isaiah. I plan to get to them quickly, before he loses interest. I need to indulge his wishes soon, while he still has them. Kids change so fast!

Background

In writing this post I began to realize the appeal of VAN. VAN is a guardian space robot from the planet BT. He acts as a protector of BT21, 24/7. Per the BT 21 planet characters website:

Hailing from Planet BT, Prince TATA dreams to spread love across the galaxy. Deciding that destiny is at hand, TATA summons guardian robot VAN to prepare for an interstellar journey to Earth. Shortly after arrival, the Prince concludes that the most effective means to win over the hearts of earthlings is to become a super, no... something much more ambitious. A UNIVERSTAR.

Other characters per that same website appear in the next image.  Gee, I wonder if a request will be rolling in for Grandma to crochet these other characters. BT is the planet. The suffix 21 stands for 21st century. This universe of characters is an offshoot of South Korean LineFriends. The Woobles recommended order of difficulty is: KOYA, RJ, SHOOKY, MANG, CHIMMY, TATA, COOKY, VAN, so apparently I did the hardest first.

I still have a backlog of Woobles to crochet from Isaiah's Christmas requests, so the characters of the BT21 planet and any associated galaxy will just have to wait.