This cute little quilt was made by Terri for her grandbaby. Her daughter selected the fabrics and chose the ruffles that are incorporated in every block. These ruffles made it impossible to do an allover pantograph pattern, the foot of the machine would get caught and possibly flip them over and stitch them down. So we decided that I would just free-motion around the ruffles, and I filled the block section with loops and daisies and added a separate daisy design to the border where the almost solid yellow border fabric makes the quilting much more visible.
This quilt was made by Joan as a gift for her grandson. I love patterns like this one where you put fairly simple blocks together, and with clever placement a secondary pattern emerges. The quilting design Joan chose is called “Taj Mahal”, a simple modern pattern that adds great texture.
Elaine has been faithfully sending me a picture of her finished block every month, ever since I published my first pattern of Barnyard Bash. Here are her first three completed Monkey Business blocks. I love the background fabric she chose, very cute. Click on the pictures for a bigger/slide show view.
This year Sigrid started sending me pictures of her finished blocks as well, and I am really enjoying them. It is so much fun to see what all of you create and how you make my patterns your own. Sigrid creates custom backgrounds for her monkeys by stitching two different fabrics together, what a great idea!
I’ll be happy to post more Show & Tell pictures. If you would like to be featured, email me photos of your finished blocks. My email address can be found on the cover page of every pattern.
Donna made this pretty quilt in spring colours from a panel. The stained glass prints are already busy enough, so we chose the design “Taj Mahal” for quilting, a simple pattern that adds nice texture.
Another finished Block of the Month top from the Chilliwack Quilters Guild found its way to me, this one was made by Janet. Members were free to choose their colours which makes Janet’s quilt very different from Ellen’s. In fact, without knowing these two were part of the same group project I probably wouldn’t even have noticed. Janet has a pretty floral feature fabric, and we went with “Ginger Flower” as the quilting pattern.
This lovely quilt in blue and white was made by Janet. After stitching all the Dresden Plates by hand, she chose an unusual block for the outer borders. I am not sure if it has a name but I like the chain look it creates. The pantograph I used for this quilt is called “Paisley Curls”.
This is Mary’s version of the popular “Labyrinth Walk” quilt. I have quilted some before, and Mary looked at the pictures and liked the “Overlapping Crop Circles” as a quilting pattern for her project. It is my favourite for the Labyrinth quilt, all the corners and angles and straight lines need a curved design that brings some motion and texture, and the Crop Circles are perfect for that.
Another month, another monkey. Time sure flies even though we are not having as much fun as we would like to with the pandemic still going on. But vaccinations are underway, and we all have to hang in there just a little bit longer. With spring around the corner and warmer weather coming, it will hopefully get a bit easier. (My apologies if you are in the southern hemisphere, when I start rambling about the weather, I often forget that half the globe is in a different season.) Anyway, this month’s monkey is looking forward to dessert, he got hold of a nice cup of ice cream. Luckily he is also wearing a bib, the way he is swinging the cup around makes it quite likely that not all of it will end up in his mouth.
As always, the pattern for this block will be available for free download until the end of the month and then move over to the pattern store when April’s free pattern is published.
EDIT: March is over, and the block has moved to the pattern store where it is now available for purchase if you missed the free download. If you just need the finishing instructions, they are still available for free download.
Für die deutsche(n) Version(en) mit metrischen Maßen bitte dem/den Kauflink(s) unten für die englische(n) Version(en) folgen und beim Checkout angeben, dass die deutsche Version gewünscht ist. Ich verschicke dann per email die Anleitung(en) in der gewünschten Sprache.
Wer nur die Anleitung zur Fertigstellung sucht, kann diese nun auch auf Deutsch kostenlos herunterladen.
I finished another scrappy donation quilt this month, using my favourite scrap pattern. I often custom quilt donation quilts as well, they are great practice objects but I didn’t have time to play around, so I used a pantograph instead that I have wanted to try for quite a while. It is called “Chiffon” and I have used it in a smaller version as a background filler but never in the default edge-to-edge size. That’s another really neat thing about scrap quilts, almost any quilting design will work. This one has already been donated to the guild, and I have started making another donation quilt, a great way to use up leftovers and do something useful.
Edit: Every time I post a picture of one of these, people start asking for the pattern in the comments. There isn’t a pattern that you can purchase. This is something that one of my German friends came up with years ago. I’ll try to explain, maybe you can figure it out by just looking at the pictures. You alternate light and dark fabrics and always press the seams away from the light pieces. I put it together in rows, I find that easier than looking for blocks. The big squares are 4″ squares (including seam allowance, so 3 1/2″ finished size). The small squares are 2″ squares, the rectangles are 2″ x 4″. This means you can just start with 4″ squares and cut them into the smaller pieces (halves and quarters) as needed, without having to worry about seam allowances. They will fit together. You can actually do this with any size squares… if you start out with 5″ squares and cut them in half or quarters, you can put it all together without having to worry about the math.
This might sound a bit confusing but just take a few 4″ squares in light and dark values and give it a try. It’s super easy, and you can make the quilt as big or small as you want to.
Sonja made this pretty quilt using batiks and donated it to a silent auction. “Ground Cover” is actually the name of the pantograph that I used for this quilt, one of my favourite leaf patterns. The warm earth colours of the quilt remind me of a walk in the woods on a sunny autumn day.
