Applique Snowman Custom Quilting

Although this wasn't a very large project it still took a lot of thinking and planning.  Here is the link to the YouTube Video:

Applique Snowman Video

Joan in Cranbrook sent me this wall hanging to quilt and the first thing I noticed was the hilarious story the applique scene depicted.  I knew that I didn't want to over-quilt the lighter fabrics because I wanted the cute story to shine through when you glanced at the wall hanging.   

So with this in mind, I decided to just add some quilting to the sky and then quilt the ground snow with straight lines. I had to outline all of the applique elements to give them dimension and come up with a way to add some movement to the scene. 

I knew immediately that I was going to do a swirl in the sky. But I struggled with the body of the snowman because the fabric was white I didn't want to add a bunch of obvious swirls or pebbles. 

I decided just to outline the existing applique and let the fabric tell the story.  You can see that I marked all of the horizontal lines with my blue water-soluble marker.  I don't have channel locks on my machine and find this to be the fastest way to get nice even straight lines. 

The easy part was the sky, as it was all free motion and designs that I felt very comfortable executing.  I separated the swirl chain from the concentric swirls with a border of pebbles just for some texture. 

but my favourite part of the quilt is the snowman face, I thought it would add to the humor of the scene if I made the face look like it had spatted.   I think it was a successful choice. 

 I didn't end up adding any extra detail inside of the snowman body as I just really wanted it to pop out of the picture. I did add some outlines.  The part that took the longest was outlining all of the appliques.  So many starts and stops.  These photos aren't the best, I was in a bit of a rush to send this home.   Thanks again to Joan from Cranbrook, BC. 

If anyone knows the name of this pattern please let me know, I haven't had any luck finding the name or designer.