Flashback Friday -- Snowflake Quilt

Here's the quilt that started my love for handwork:

I made this one, wow, six or seven years ago. (Has it really been that long??) This was an absolute "wing it" project from start to finish. I started by printing out a few photos of magnified snowflakes I'd found online. From there I made them into patterns for the snowflakes, making up many of my own as well, which I fused onto random pieces of blue fabric I had.

After that I reluctantly decided that if I ever wanted to be able to wash the finished project, the snowflakes needed to be stitched around the edges to prevent them from coming off. I purchased some sparkly silver thread and commenced doing all those itty-bitty blanket stitches. I loved the sparkly edges, and actually really enjoyed the process! It's nice to have your hands busy doing something when you are "doing nothing" -- like watching movies or commuting!

I couldn't decide then how to best approach making a quilt from my blocks. I certainly didn't want them to be lined up in straight rows. Finally I decided I would need to attach them all to a background piece, rather than try and piece them in funny angles with all that bias cutting. I found a sparkly snowflake background fabric I liked, laid them all on top the way I liked (as though they were falling snow!), and safety-pinned them in place. I turned each edge under and stitched them down.

I used another metallic thread for the quilting. I started by quilting around each square. Then I free-motion quilted around the snowflakes -- about 1/4" from the edges. That wasn't enough quilting, so I then quilted little asterisk-y snowflakes here and there to fill in the empty spaces.

I just love the quilted snowflake outlines on the back -- which is, of course, also sparkly!

I really enjoy creating make-it-up-as-you-go quilts. It is often quite surprising where the journey will take you!