The blocks in the I Wish You a Merry QAL continue to shine!  The hosts of the QAL have created such a delightful range and depth of blocks so far, making this a one of a kind fun QAL just ahead of the holidays.   The current block, Reindeer Games was designed by Bobbi Bridgeman at Snowy Days Quilting.

Did you know that reindeer eyes turn blue in the winter?  Fun fact from Live Science – the backs of reindeer eyeballs change from gold in the summer to blue in the winter to better protect them from predators.  How did I learn such a thing?  Ahem.  Of course I had to research what colors would be appropriate for my reindeer block, given my quilt has nearly zero brown in it (the Christmas Tree Farm trunks are brown, and very tiny in size so I didn’t take that brown into consideration).    I learned that reindeer have many different coats, namely grays and tans as well as browns.  And in that search, I discovered the fun eye fact.  Now that said, their eyes do look dark brown or black but still a good factoid to have on hand  when watching Rudolph this year.

On to the fun part of this post – the reindeer block.  Despite having many pieces, it was such an easy block to piece and actually came together very quickly.  Bobbi’s tutorial was fantastic and provided measurements for each step of the block.  I chose to press all my seams open, as I have found that I lose an 1/8 of an inch or so when I press to one side with this many small pieces.

All in all I am in love with my reindeer whom is a She.  Yes, reindoe (made up) also have antlers use their antlers to defend food in small patches 
of cleared snow.  These females tend to be more socially dominant and are overall in better physical form, though growing them costs them lots of energy (from discoverwildlife.com).

This block has my heart.  I’ve loved each design so far in the 9 blocks we have made.  The women who created them have done an exceptional job.  But this one…just too cute!

And, because I can’t bear to see scraps thrown out, I’ve been making hsts out the wazoo when the directions call for a flipped corner.  This set is just from Ms. Reindeer, but I have a growing stack of them now for some unknown future project.

It seems Santa might show up in a block too given our last one, Christmas Presents was also seemingly getting closer to Christmas Day.