Frozen Friday: Olaf!

It really was a frozen Friday around here today!  I was glad I filled all the bird feeders yesterday because we woke up to snow and a two hour school delay.  That meant no therapy or preschool for my son, so I wasn't quite as productive as I normally am on a weekday.  (Frozen Friday almost turned into Snowy Saturday!)  I can't complain too much, though, since we don't have to make up late starts, and I know the rest of the country has really had it bad this winter.

We are continuing our Frozen patterns with Olaf, another 5" paper pieced block.  This guy was a lot of fun to piece, and seeing his big grin come together was really lifting my spirits.  I found a white fabric with tiny daisies that actually looked a little like snowflakes, so I thought that would be fun to play with.  I actually love the way it turned out.  Olaf is available here or on Craftsy (coming soon).

The computer-generated image.

The real deal!

Olaf, like his counterparts, is probably rated at a healthy advanced level.  I have to say, though, that it is mostly the size of the block that leads to this difficulty level.  If you are enlarging him, he should be much simpler to put together.  Because of the small pieces, I have included both a numbered and an unnumbered pattern in case you find it easier to work with the blank pattern.  I am always happy to enlarge my patterns for people and email them to you if you need help with that.  It won't be in the whole pretty pattern package, but I can send you just the enlarged pattern pieces.  Just leave a note in the comments!

Another thing I wanted to mention about these tiny patterns is the importance of accuracy.  Before I stitch two sections together, I fold one piece back along the line where I will be stitching to make sure any spots that need to match up do, and that I will have straight stitch lines on all sides when I am finished.  Sometimes if I have more than one spot that needs to match up, I will baste those spots and fold the section back to make sure they line up, then I will go back and stitch the whole line.  Once I stitch it, I take it to the iron to press the seam.  If something doesn't line up PERFECTLY, I will use the seam ripper and give it another go.  If you leave a small mistake there, little problems can multiply exponentially over the course of piecing the block together and your block can end up seriously malformed at the end, which is a lot of hard work gone to waste.  It is better to check and double-check at every step.

I can see some bits of adhesive stuck to my piece from ironing on the girls' Girl Scout patches, so it's probably time for me to clean my iron.  I usually get rid of all the gunk by mixing baking soda, some rock salt, and a tiny bit of water to make a thick paste, then take a paper towel to it and give it a little elbow grease.  My iron comes beautifully clean in no time.  If I get it in the little steam holes (I'm sure they have a more technical name than that), I just use a toothpick to pluck it out.  I never use the steam function on my iron anyway, so I don't worry about it too much.  If you are worried about it, you could probably cover them with a little tape or something to keep them clean while you scrub.

Over the next week I will be stitching Kristoff and Elsa, and hopefully retesting my revised Anna pattern.  I have to have this quilt done by next Saturday, so we are in time crunch mode!  If you give any of these patterns a try, I would love to see and here about your results and share them here on the blog.  :)