What Have You Made with Your Winter Whispers Blocks?
So many of you have downloaded Frosted Branches, Frozen Flowers, and Glacial Hearts — and I am genuinely curious what you’ve been making with them. Hit reply and tell me. I love seeing where these blocks end up.
In the meantime, here’s a little inspiration from my studio.
I recently finished two projects: the Frosted Branches pillow and the Winter Whispers Runner. If you’ve been wondering what your blocks could grow into, these might spark some ideas.
Choosing the Center
The runner uses two blocks — Frosted Branches and Ice Petals. Because Ice Petals carries the most visual weight, it went in the center. I could have flipped that, putting a single Frosted Branches block in the middle — but I’m drawn to strong center elements. The eye needs somewhere to land first.
Building the Border
For the border, I used one of the heart templates from the Winter Whispers set to make small heart blocks. When I laid them out, I alternated the heart blocks with plain squares rather than running hearts all the way around. All hearts would have been too airy. A solid border would have been too heavy. Alternating landed right in between.
For fabric, I kept the border in the middle value range — light enough to frame, dark enough not to fade. Then I added a narrow inner border in a deeper shade as a clean dividing line. That dark stripe does double duty: it separates the center from the border and gives you a natural starting point when it’s time to quilt.
Making the Quilting Work With the Appliqué
This is the part I want you to pay attention to, because it makes a real difference.
I used the same heart template to quilt the border blocks — but I turned the hearts so the points faced inward toward the center. Reusing an appliqué element as a quilting motif is one of the best tricks I know. It ties the whole piece together, and it takes the guesswork out of “how should I quilt this?”
From there, I echoed the quilted hearts to fill the blocks, and added a little stitch in the ditch on the narrow borders. On the runner center, I echoed the appliqué shapes and added simple scrollwork in the open spaces.
Thread color mattered as much as the motifs here. A light thread would have let the appliqué blocks compete with each other. A slightly darker thread pulled everything together — the same way netting holds together Irish crochet motifs or tatted lace. It unifies without flattening.
And here’s the part that surprises people: all of this quilting was done with a standard presser foot on my domestic machine. No free motion. No walking foot. Just slow, steady small stitches.
You don’t need special equipment. You need patience and a plan.
What’s Next
The full runner pattern — including the Ice Petals block — will be part of my upcoming book. In the meantime, if you want to start finishing your blocks into something displayable, the Zipper Pillow Workshop is a great next step. [link]
Now — your turn. What have you made? I’d love to see it.
