Completed Selvage Snowman Quilt

So what can I say? He's done. He's huge. He's made of over 700 pieces of selvage. Yes, I am sane. He's my favourite selvage quilt I've made. (So far.) He's my own design. He was free-pieced as I went along.

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I went a little wild with the pictures. It was fun! Click any picture to enlarge. More info on the quilt and that giant snowman in the background are below.

The quilting was done at my local quilt store by long-arm. Thanks Tina! It's a free-style all over stipple done in white thread. Tina (Tina Hanson of Town and Country Quilts, Rothesay, NB) does a great job. On this quilt I think the quilting looks like wind swirling in a snowstorm.
I couldn't believe how the giant snowman's colours coordinated with the quilt!
For an idea of the size of the quilt, here it is on a Queen size mattress. I wasn't planning on making it that big, but people kept giving me selvages to include! (Which was awesome.)
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On the subject, I get a lot of questions about how I get so many selvages to use for my quilts. They aren't all from my own fabrics -- not even close. If I had to rely on only my own selvages I could have maybe made a table runner, but never a queen size quilt. I am so fortunate to have "met" blogland friends who volunteered to send me some selvages, plus local friends and my Mom who gather them for me too. I love the recycling aspect of selvage quilting -- using these bits that would have been discarded otherwise.

Here's a close up of his head. It is fun to carefully choose the placement of selvages. There is one that says "Peas and Carrots" right near his nose.
Close up of the bottom snowball.
The border. I alternated Christmas fabrics between selvages.
The backing is from the Rainbow Garden line by Prints Charming. It is so soft. I love it.
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The dark turquoise and red in the quilt are Kona cottons. The light turquoise is Northcott.

I signed and dated it right on the front on some selvages. The signature is in the lower right of the quilt. It is dated 2010 because all the piecing was done just before Christmas.
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If you are interested, I wrote a tutorial on how to make the selvage snowflakes. The link is on my sidebar.
Just for fun, here's a blooper reel pic. I tell you, our "photo shoots" get more and more hilarious all the time. I am lucky my husband is such a good sport about it. We had to take a dining room chair along with us this time and it was tricky to get it level in the snow. Plus it was slippery with snow on it. The quilt was so huge it had to be clipped to a curtain rod. Plus it was windy! So anyway, believe me there were more out takes than decent photos.
So, about that giant snowman. His name is Gerby 2011. He is 20 feet 11 inches high. He is located in Saint John, NB. (About 20 minutes from where we live) He was made by a single man. Yes, WOW! The creator's name is Chris Brake. You can read an article about the making of the snowman here. It is really cool. After we took the pictures we probably stayed for another hour while the kids played around the snowman and in a big snow fort built beside it. Other people came along and took pics of the snowman too. It was a great outing for a sunny winter Saturday afternoon.
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Happy Quilting!

Meet My Selvage Snowman

So my cool dude (pun totally intended) is done to quilt top form. Yes, I did question my sanity near the end of this. It is huge. It is floor to ceiling. My six-foot tall husband is standing on a dining room chair and using two curtain rods to extend his arm span to take the photos.

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Anyway, I LOVE how turned out! I'll post more about my process when it's all quilted and bound in January. But in the meantime ...

HAPPY HOLIDAYS
TO YOU

AND YOURS!

Selvage Snowflake Tutorial

I've been making some selvage snowflakes to go in the background of my Selvage Snowman quilt in progress. I thought I'd post this tutorial in case anyone else wants to make some too. They'd also be cool in a little wall hanging, table runner, pillow cover ...

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This tutorial will show my basic approach, but of course the most fun comes in improvising!!! So here we go ...

Cut a square of background fabric. For this example I used a 7 inch square of Kona cotton.

Mark a line down the middle of the square. I used a permanent laundry pen as it was all I had. Whatever you use typically use to mark your fabric is great.
Using your ruler and your judgment, mark two diagonal lines. Make sure they intersect in the center. If you like you can measure down from each corner to keep it all even, but for small squares I would say guess, wing it, freestyle it, you know ...
So, since this six point shape is your basic shape, you could stop here and move on to the step of applying the selvages, but in this example, let's get a little fancier.
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Use your ruler to place a little mark out from the center of the snowflake onto each line. In my case, I measured 1.5 inches out onto each line.

Join the marked points as shown above. If you want to go even fancier, draw another set of lines evenly spaced above the first set.
Okay, so now to prepare the selvages. Trim your selvages so that just 1/4 inch of fabric is showing above the white selvage band.
Fold that little 1/4 inch bit of fabric to the back and press. (Try not to steam your fingers!) By the way, like my yucky ironing board? ;-)
Now the sewing part. All the little inside lines get sewn first. Cut each little selvage piece so it ends right along your intersecting line (Each end will be cut at a little angle. Just snip with your scissors.) When positioning it just before sewing, make sure your drawn line that the selvage is covering is centered underneath it.

Sew very close to the edge all around the whole piece.

Here's what the back will look like after several are sewn in place.

Keep covering all your little inside lines. Try not to overlap any selvages to keep the bulk down. Don't worry if your cut edges look a little rough, they will be neatly covered over soon and won't show!

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Once all your little inside lines are sewn down, I would give the whole block a quick ironing.

Okay, now to cover those ratty edges. Carefully lay a selvage down the whole length of your first diagonal line. It really doesn't matter which diagonal line you sew first, but after doing a few of these, I find it looks nicest if you save your straight vertical line for last. I would also save the nicest selvage for last as the most of it will show.

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And one more tip, if some of your selvages have a slightly wider white band than others, save them for these longer lines. The wider they are, the more of your messy edges will be covered making everything even more secure.

Sew. In this pic, I just have one side of the last selvage sewn down.

The back.

Press and trim! You may wish to trim a little extra bit off each of the vertical sides to make everything less boxy looking and make the snowflake spokes nice and even!
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I also typically stay stitch the edge of the block where the selvages meet the edge.

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Voila!

Now make lots more!!

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Thanks so much for stopping by! If you make any of these, I'd love to see them! Also, please feel free to link to this tutorial if you'd like. Happy Quilting and Happy Holidays!

The Selvage Snowman Saga: The Abominable Snowman!

He's getting huge! I can't say I planned on him being gigantic, but that's what happens when friends start giving me selvages, and I'm having fun, and I have to keep adding more to keep each of the eight sides of each snowball somewhat even ...

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He's just laying there in the pic, the three snowballs aren't attached. I'm also going to be piecing him into the background, so that will round out the outside of each snowball.

Here's the rough shape of his hat and part of his scarf. With the hat on, he's about as tall as me. And I'm 5 foot 8.

I have started cutting some Christmas fabric for the border. These are random widths and will be spaced between selvage groupings.

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I'm participating in Fabric Tuesday. If you'd like to see lots of other bloggers' fun and fabulous fabric projects, just click here to go to the list of all the participants!
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Have a great week!

The Selvage Snowman Saga: Making Headway

Just a quick photo post to let you see the tiny bit more I got done. I'm hoping for some sewing time this weekend. The snowman is starting to get more challenging and interesting to work on now ... So what do those LOOK (hint, hint) like in the photo above ? ...
Leftover fabric from my Selvage O'Lantern quilt will be making up the carrot nose ...
Lots of small bits ...

Not eyes this time ...

Eyes, nose and mouth ...

My method is to build these parts up with selvages to get nice squares or rectangles that are easy to sew together. The nose may be a little tricky, but the mouth and eyes are easy ... there will be no corncob pipe, but there will be a hat and scarf. I saved my black selvages for a top hat and my red ones for a scarf.

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Happy Thanksgiving to everyone celebrating today south of the border! And as always, Happy Quilting!

The Selvage Snowman Saga: Still Rolling Along

I'm still having lots of fun working on my Selvage Snowman! No frustrations yet, knock, knock. The bottom snowball is about 20 inches wide now and is probably almost done. Things were getting a bit uneven and skewed as it rolled bigger (just like a real snowball sometimes, right?) so I was careful with the spacing of the last few rows of selvages, making adjustments when necessary, and things got much better.

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As you can see, I've started the middle snowball too. It will be just slightly smaller than the bottom one probably.

Here's the bigger one close up.

And the smaller.

Now, look at this pile of selvage treats. The fabulous Kelly of Pinkadot Quilts volunteered to send me "some" selvages ... well, little did I know that "some" selvages would mean this wonderful huge assortment of Christmas fabric selvages!!! She's totally the selvage Santa!!! And she sent some fabric too. See that snowman print? I'll be using some in the border of this quilt! Anyway, Kelly makes great stuff. Surf on over and say "Hi!"

Just for fun, I thought I'd show my couch. You know, black couches and lots of loose thread strings everywhere go so well together ;-) ... This couch is in my home office/wannabe sewing room. I work from home, but lately I've been staying out of my office and working up at the dining room table, so I'm not tempted by these selvages ... or by the pink squares that are lying on the floor there ... or by the plastic cabinets full of fabric ... or ... you get the idea ...
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Happy Quilting!

The Selvage Snowman Saga: Rolling Along

So the first snowball is well on its way. I'm pretty happy so far. It has been going great with really no frustration -- yet, knock, knock. I said I would discuss missteps and mistakes here, so I would like to point out that the middle little fussy-cut snowflake is changed from my previous post. I changed my mind after I only had about 4 selvages on the first one, so it wasn't much at all to change.

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In the photo above, the outside ring of selvages isn't sewn on, but they are just lying there. My method is to choose the selvages one complete ring at a time, then sew a round of eight pieces in place.

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I have been ironing after each round to keep things flat. Or close to flat anyway.

So after I pick my eight selvages I pile them up in order and head to the machine.

Then I sew. I use white thread. My sewing machine is set on the standard default stitch of 2.5. I sew as close to the edge of the selvage as possible and watch carefully. If I go off a little bit, I go back and go over that area again. If I go off a lot then I seam rip and do it all again. I am actually quite good at sewing the selvages straight now, just from practice.
Then I flip up the selvage I've just sewn on and trim back the underneath a bit to reduce bulk.

Here's what the back looks like.
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I'm not sure how big this will get. This is the snowball for the base of the snowman so it will be the biggest. It's over 12 inches in diameter so far ...

And finally, see the *magic button* my new sewing machine has to fix all your mistakes ... hee, hee. Wouldn't it be fabulous if you really could just press a sewing machine button to fix up all your problems?!?!
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The real purpose of this button is of course to stitch several stitches in place and 'fix' the thread rather than backstitching ... I didn't have this on my old machine and it is a nice new feature.
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Thanks for stopping by! Happy Quilting!