May: Holly Jolly May & Peepers

It's official, I've been evicted from my sewing room for a few months while these fuzzy, rolly polly peepers take over and grow. Truthfully, I don't mind much. At the moment I'm still the "Big Scary Hand" that feeds them, waters them ... and yes, periodically picks them up and cuddles them. In a month or two it should be warm enough, hopefully, to put them out in the big A frame coop where they can start their chicken lives.



To take care of my sewing jones, my husband and I are taking a sewing class and get this, WE MADE PAJAMA BOTTOMS! Us! Who knew we could do that? And they fit. We can actually wear them! Unreal.

In preparations for the babies arriving, I did attempt to race to get blocks done in advance for May and June. I got May's done but June is only partically put together so I may have to take my machine into the dining room to finish that one.

For May I thought we'd do the holly leaves. We have to make six of these. One line of three blocks, one line of two and a single one. These are scattered throughout several parts of the quilt.

If you are following along in the book, this is month 5:








Cut out all your pieces as indicated in the book.

We are going to be sewing snowballing the corners with the
small squares on the large square "berry".

The trick to doing these small squares is to start stitching about 1/4" in the block.

Then back stitch to the edge.

Then go forward over the area you've already stitched and
finish from where you started to backtracked.

Hope that makes sense.
We are just trying to make sure our machines don't munch those corners.

Sew on all four sides of the "berry" and clip corners.
Iron back and sliver trim to make the berry piece square.

Follow through and snowball the rectangle "leaves" as well.
Sliver trim.

Following the pattern, add the appropriate "spacer" blocks if creating the 3 block or two block set. 

And there you go, finished holly blocks just in time for May Day... (well yeah, I'm a bit late but they were done early so still counts... right?... right?)