The start of Welcome to the North Pole wall hanging

At the end of March, I had a second surgery.  I was ordered not to do anything strenuous.  Take it easy they said, as the stitches need to heal.  With my adult kids on patrol, I had to stick to those orders.  Taking walks or sitting and reading books was about all that I could do at the beginning, but come the end of April I was going stir-crazy.  I couldn't take it anymore.

Then all of a sudden an idea came to me.  I received a pattern book from my daughter.....I want to say about 5 yrs ago, maybe 6.  It was at the old house.  The pattern was a hand applique wall hanging called Welcome to the North Pole by Piece O' Cake.  I had been wanting to start this quilt for a while, but I kept putting myself off.  I already had a hand applique project on the go.  But I decided that I was going to treat myself and just go for it.  Who cares how many I have on the go!!  As a friend told me recently, "at least you get them done".  I do get them done.....eventually.....lol.

Anyways instead of sitting in my chair upstairs reading, I decided to take myself downstairs to my studio and start tracing the pattern on freezer paper.  It was such a peaceful thing.  I was enjoying the process of working on this, and my kids were ok with it, as it wasn't strenuous.  I did also take my time with many breaks in between.  A few days later I was done with the tracing.

Then came the fabric selection.  As this is essentially a Christmas quilt, I pulled out my stash of Christmas fabrics.  As I said earlier, I've been wanting to make this quilt for some time now, hence over time, I had already collected all the dark blue background fabric.  I placed all of those blocks out on the floor and proceeded to select fabrics for the different elements of each block, working with the large main objects first, to distribute the colour throughout the quilt.  This was also done over the course of a few days.

By this point, I took a few days of rest with some appointments.  Once I got back downstairs, I figured I would just start cutting the pieces.  As I took my time and worked on these pieces, I went on YouTube, to the Piece O' Cake channel by Becky Goldsmith.  What a fountain of information!!  Through what I watched, I learned a few different methods of applique and applied some of it to the way that I cut certain pieces.  That's why you will see below, that some of the pieces are cut properly and others are only rough cut.  All the pieces are now cut!!  I moved it from the floor to the design wall, to keep the dog from making a scramble out of all the pieces...lol.

The whole process was so relaxing and that was good for my mental well being.  I'm just not the type, to just sit around and do nothing all day.  As the t-shirt I have says, Quilting is my Therapy!!  I was quite in the zone of making this wall hanging.  I took the first block out on the back patio, sat under the umbrella and started hand stitching the pieces.  I think it took me another couple of days to get this block done.  It's sooooo cute!!

The block is called Sprinkles Ice Cream Shoppe.  The signage was done later so it still needs to be appliqued onto the block.  While selecting the fabrics for this block, I tried to find fabrics to play up on the theme (ie the cone has the grid that you often find on an ice cream cone, the ice cream fabric looks like they have sprinkles on them, and the tree looks like it is decorated already).  Fun, fun, fun!!  This was so much fun!  By the time this block was done, my spirits were lifted.  It felt good to get back into it.

Take care everyone.  Hope you can find some time to do whatever it is that gives you peace and lifts your spirits!