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.