Snow Happy Hearts..... finished!

I am thrilled to say that I have managed to get the last two blocks of my Snow Happy Hearts Quilt finished.  You will recall that I have been using the lovely free heart patterns generously designed and released each month by Anne Sutton of Bunny Hill Designs for the applique designs in the centre of each of my blocks and, I have been having such a lot of fun creating the blocks around them.

November's pattern from Anne  featured another adorable snowman 'giving thanks'.  This seemed the perfect month to add the word 'Hearts' to the applique background as well as the month's name of 'November'.

We give thanks with our hearts and, as I have mentioned previously, I wanted the words 'Snow', 'Happy' and 'Hearts' to appear somewhere in the overall quilt and now they do! 

I also added a little embroidered heart in one corner of the applique background.  I used the heart template from February's heart to mark the background fabric before embroidering the shape with chain stitch.  The detached chain flower was added freehand to the middle of the heart.

December's pattern has my favourite snowman of them all.

He is so cute!  On the applique background for the month as well as the word 'December', I also added the word 'Noel' and a little holly sprig.

The final touch to the block was to add a sprinkling of sparkly snowflakes which I created by stitching six equally spaced fly stitches over the top of a sequin.  The stitches hold the sequin in place and the sequin provides the sparkle!

Once the two blocks were finished I was able to piece them together with October's block and then add the final row to the quilt top and, this is how the finished quilt top looks.

I am delighted with it and, I hope that I will be able to get it quilted in time for Christmas.  I have decided I am going to hand quilt it as I think that will be easiest option around all the extra hand stitched details on the individual blocks, so I need to get stitching!!