And So It Begins . . .

While I've was home sick with the stomach bug . . . on the second day, after I got tired of laying in bed and sleeping and thought I might actually feel better if I moved around a little . . . I took some hot tea into the Sweat Shop and started picking out fabrics for a few of the projects I've decided to work on this year.

From there, the next step was to start doing a little cutting, and I thought the January row of the Quilt Doodle BOM was probably the easiest place to start.  I should tell you, though, that being the quilting rebel that I am, I decided to make the blocks MY way--which means instead of making half square triangles and piecing a snowman head like you would a nine-patch block, I cut out the head as one piece and sewed corners on--the kind where you sew on the diagonal and flip the fabric back.  I think you probably know what I mean.  And then on each of those corners, I sewed a second seam, and when I trimmed the excess, I ended up with small half square triangles.  I'll show you what I'm doing with those later.  For now, though, I'll show you my snowman row:

At this point, my snowmen are eye-less, because I'll use black buttons for eyes, and I will probably wait until the quilt is quilted before I add those--or maybe just before, but for now I'll wait.  I also deviated from the pattern by hand appliqueing the carrot noses, because hand applique is just what I like to do.  And it gave me something fairly restful to do while I felt icky and sat back on the couch and watched some TV.

This has been a fun section to work on and if the rest of the quilt is as cute as this first month, I know I'll really enjoy participating and I'll end up with a great quilt.  How about you?  Are you working on this project too?