I feel like the first thing I need to admit about the scrappy mice block is that I panicked. I wanted to maintain the scrappy patchwork approach that I used in the other blocks (lots of fabrics in similar colors and values). But I found myself running up against two completely arbitrary rules. The first, as I mentioned in the star block blog post, I want all the blocks to be unique colors. The second was that I was really tied to making the mice blocks from real mice colors - white, brown or gray. Why? I don’t know. I made a green owl block for crying out loud. Why this rule came into play now, I will never know.
I initially dismissed white because white mice feel more appropriate for Christmas than Halloween. Then I dismissed brown because I don’t have a lot of rich brown in my stash, only ginger and saddle browns. And I’m probably going to use those for the broom handles, and I don’t want the mice to be too close in color to the brooms. I was left with gray and I really don’t have a lot of gray in my stash.
I made one block with the few grays I do have and I did not like it. So much so that I apparently threw the block into another dimension and now I can’t find it. I had to grab a screenshot of a video I shared to Instagram for this picture. The variety of color and large scale prints did not support the design, so I panicked and abandoned the idea of a patchwork mouse in favor of using just one fabric per mouse body.
I really do love how these came out, and I had fun picking new ear and tail accent colors for each mouse. I know I love them individually, but I’m nervous about how I’ll like them in the quilt top. The white on black background is very high contrast…I wonder if it will be distractingly so, once all the blocks are assembled.
As with all the previous blocks, I found it easiest to work through one block at a time. Similar to the owl blocks, I had to alter the size of the eye units to account for making the mice one at a time instead of all three at once. I’ve put together another bonus cutting guide for you to reference. The eye units have a little bit of trimming room so don’t forget to cut these to the width listed in the main pattern.
Other than making the eye units one at a time, working through the pattern is very straightforward. Two blocks need the A face units, A rump units and A leg units. One block uses the B face unit, B rump unit and B leg unit.
If you figure out how to make a completely patchwork mouse, I’d love to see what you come up with. Just the scrappy bats left, then we’ll figure out how to make the brooms and background scrappy.