And here it finally is: the finished Penguin Promenade quilt. I hope you had as much fun with the little guys as I did. I have sent the finishing instructions to everyone who has emailed me a picture of their finished blocks, and I will post the gallery of penguins in my next post, sometime this week. I enjoy looking at all this creativity and the different fabrics everyone picked and how it all comes alive. For those who have only collected the patterns and know they are not going to make the deadline for sending in their finished block pictures, the finishing instructions are now available as a separate pattern in the store section. And for those who missed most or all of the free blocks, the pattern for the full quilt with all nine blocks and finishing instructions is now available for purchase as well in both English/Imperial and German/metric.
Für die deutsche Version mit metrischen Maßen bitte dem Kauflink unten für die englische Version folgen und beim Checkout angeben, dass die deutsche Version gewünscht ist. Ich verschicke dann per email die Anleitung in der gewünschten Sprache.
Welcome to 2021! May the new year be better and brighter than the last one! Let’s start it off with some fun stuff, the first block of my brand new “Monkey Business” Block of the Month 2021. This year there will be 12 blocks once again, all of them featuring a monkey. The first block has a monkey that is doing something close to what we would consider “normal” monkey things. The other eleven blocks are all more cartoonish, with the monkeys doing all kinds of summer things and carrying accessories. Think along the lines of last year’s penguins, and you’ll have the general idea. The finished block size is 10″ again. I don’t particularly like going over 8″ because larger blocks won’t fit on a regular letter page but even though I don’t mind small details, there are limits, so 10″ it is.
The finished quilt size is approx. 52″ x 64″. I will provide the finishing instructions with the last block. They won’t be anything special, just plain old sashing and a border. Feel free to come up with something a bit more creative if you find that boring. I have decided to do the same layout for future BOM projects, it makes writing the finishing instructions easier and faster. I would still like to see your finished blocks though. I have already received a few pictures of finished Penguin blocks, and I will create a gallery for all of you to see them. Hopefully next week, so stay tuned. Remember that you still have three months to send me pictures of your finished Penguin blocks to get the finishing instructions for free!
On the cover page of the first pattern, you can find an estimate of the amounts of fabrics that you need if you want to use the same fabrics for all twelve monkeys. There is no need to do that, just dig into your scrap bins and have fun. The accessories will need a lot of small scraps in different colours, and the exact colours don’t really matter, so go with what you have and use some of those scraps. You know they will multiply anyway as soon as you turn your back 😀
The free pattern will only be available in English/Imperial again. There will be a German/metric version available for purchase later. The rest of the rules are the same as always, and I copied them from last year’s post:
A new block will be published on the first day of every month at 9 am Pacific Standard/Daylight Time. Any changes I might have to make due to unforeseen circumstances beyond my control will be announced here on the blog. Since I am in the Pacific time zone, it will already be the second day of the month for some of you. Please be patient and please don’t email me asking when the next block will be published. I don’t like to schedule posts to be published in the middle of the night. There can always be a problem with one of the pattern files, and I would like to be able to fix it within minutes instead of waking up to dozens of messages complaining about the bug. If you find an issue, then please don’t hesitate to contact me, so I can fix it ASAP.
Each block will be available for free download during the month of its publication. It will be moved to the store section when the next block is published. If you miss a block, you can still purchase it for a small fee. Please do not email me asking me to send you the pattern for free. I will ignore these requests. I only charge $2 per block (and that’s Canadian dollars – as I write this, this amount equals approx. 1.55 US dollars and a bit less than 1.30 Euros – you can’t even get a coffee for these amounts anymore!), and I will make bundle packs available again for three or six blocks, once we get there, that will give you an additional discount. Please respect my copyright and don’t pass your copy of the pattern on to your friend who might have missed the free download. This will just result in designers not offering free patterns anymore.
Thank you for reading all this, and without further ado, here is the download link for the first block. Enjoy!
EDIT: January 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.
Christmas will certainly be different this year! Due to Covid restrictions, many of us will not be able to celebrate the way we are used to which is of course disappointing. But protecting all of us and our loved ones is more important than physical gatherings, and with the help of technology we will still be able to be together and maybe even create some new traditions. A lot has changed in the last few weeks, and with the arrival of vaccines, hopefully we will be able to get back to more normal times next year. I will be taking a much needed break for the next two weeks. Have a happy holiday season, thank you all for reading my ramblings and leaving comments, you are all very much appreciated. I’ll see you on January 1, 2021 with the first block of the new Monkey Business BOM. Until then, have a good time and be safe!
I have been posting teasers for a while, and today is finally the day to reveal next year’s Block of the Month project called “Monkey Business”. Boy, was it ever difficult to come up with a monkey that I liked! Sometimes I know in my head what it is supposed to look like but it is really difficult to bring my vision to life on my computer screen. Do you remember Monchhichis? They were all the rage in the early 80s, and my early drawings looked a lot like them, and I definitely didn’t want that. It took me two months to finally come up with a monkey face that I liked and that made me laugh. It probably didn’t help that I decided to learn how to draw in Inkscape. All my previous designs were drawn in Electric Quilt (EQ) which is a great quilt design program but I hit its limits on the appliqué drawing table some time ago. I am really glad I persisted and managed to acquire some solid Inkscape skills, it is so much easier to manipulate digital drawings with all the additional drawing options, and now that I am familiar with it, it makes the drawing much faster.
There will be 12 blocks again in 2021, and once again it will be a cartoonish style quilt showing monkeys participating in all kinds of activities. Since the penguins were skiing and sledding, I thought it would be fun to do summer things this time. The first block featured above* is the only one that remotely looks like a monkey doing “normal” monkey things, the rest of them are more along the lines of ice skating penguins. Have you heard of the saying (apparently from Poland?) “Not my monkeys, not my circus”? It has become some sort of mantra for me, trying to keep myself calm in these crazy times. Well, these ARE my monkeys, and they made me laugh a lot while drawing them. I hope you will enjoy them too and will join me in looking forward to a brighter year 2021.
Edit: I forgot to mention that it will start on January 1, 2021 at 9 am PST, and the rules will be pretty much the same as before, I will post details when I publish the first block. The blocks will be available for free download during the month of their publication (in English/Imperial only).
* The green and yellow border is NOT part of the block/quilt, there just wasn’t enough room for the text on the plain block.
I don’t know how popular Eric Carle and his books are in North America but I can tell you that especially “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” is a huge deal in Europe. I remember growing up with it in the 70s, and we bought it (and several other of his books) again for our son. Andover Fabrics created a fabric line with his quirky illustrations, and Jane made this adorable quilt for her grandchild. She wanted a bit of custom quilting, and I did a mix of pantograph and free motion quilting. Detailed quilting would be lost in the colourful fabrics but the caterpillar panel had a lot of empty space. I immediately thought of “Champagne Bubbles” as a background filler. I used the regular size panto version for the rest of the quilt and a much smaller version to fill the white background and added a bit of free motion texture to the caterpillar. I love how this quilt turned out, one of the cutest projects I have quilted so far.
“Toward The Sun” is a modern design by Robin Pickens, and this is Bonnie’s version of the quilt. She chose a pantograph called “Sun Scallops”, isn’t it just perfect for her project? A lovely wall hanging to brighten up any day!
What a great Cookie Exchange Blog Hop we had last week! I agree with Carol of Just Let Me Quilt… every year I think this was the best hop ever, and then next year comes along and tops it. So many delicious Christmas treats and holiday projects to choose from and admire. A big thank you to Carol for all the work she puts into her blog hops. And thank you to everyone who visited my blog and took the time to leave a comment. I always enjoy reading them, and I have to apologize because this year I just didn’t have the time to reply to them all. Not just for the blog hop post but all of my recent (and not so recent) posts. There are only so many hours in the day, and I spent a lot of them getting next year’s BOM ready, so I hope this makes up for being a bad hostess and not replying to all the wonderful comments. But please know I read and appreciate all of them and all of you.
Early this morning I drew the winners of the giveaway and emailed the patterns to them. If you are a winner and didn’t receive an email, please check your spam folder. If you still can’t find the pattern, please let me know. Congratulations to
If you didn’t win but would still like a copy of the pattern, it is now available for purchase in the store section. I also wrote a German version of the pattern with metric measurements. It’s relatively easy to do for small projects that don’t involve a lot of math.
Für die deutsche Version mit metrischen Maßen bitte dem Kauflink unten für die englische Version folgen und beim Checkout angeben, dass die deutsche Version gewünscht ist. Ich verschicke dann per email die Anleitung in der gewünschten Sprache.
Yes, I know that Halloween is over and Christmas is coming 🙂 But I am months behind in posting pictures, and I am not going to wait for October to come around again before showing this gorgeous quilt that I quilted in July. “Vintage Trick Or Treat” is a Crabapple Hill design, and this version was made by Maryanne. I was delighted to custom quilt it for her. I find Crabapple Hill quilts much more difficult to quilt than for example Judy Niemeyer designs. It feels much more natural to me to come up with designs for geometric shapes than trying to figure out what to do with the beautiful hand embroidery that only needs stabilizing but not really any quilting. If you are wondering about the border, the quilt is supposed to have scalloped edges which will be cut after quilting. Maryanne had already marked where she was planning to cut, and after stitching the piano keys, I stitched around outside her markings to make sure the threads were secure after trimming. This quilt is truly a labour of love!
Welcome to the last day of the Virtual Cookie Exchange Blog Hop 2020, and a big thank you to Carol of Just Let Me Quilt for organizing it again. I wish I could join more blog hops but with my main business being longarm quilting I simply don’t have the time. But I didn’t want to miss the Cookie Exchange, this is my 3rd year, and I love all the delicious recipes and Christmas projects that are being shared.
Once again I will be sharing a German recipe. After German Butter Cookies in 2018 and Hazelnut Cookies last year, I am going with Mandelsplitter this year, a German chocolaty delight that requires no baking. The name translates to “slivered almonds”, and they come in all kinds of variations and are very popular in Germany. I have been making these for 30 years or so, and somehow the recipe got lost during our move to Canada. I was sure I had scanned and saved every recipe I wanted to keep but this one was nowhere to be found. Not a big problem, I remembered the amounts of chocolate and almond slivers and how to put it together.
I have to back up a bit here and admit that I don’t like to cook at all, and baking is only marginally better. It’s not that I can’t do it, I am just not loving it. I love eating though… 😀 Anyway, my husband loves to cook, and he is quite good at it, you can actually taste the love he puts into his creations. Both he and my son belong to those people who religiously follow every step in a recipe and carefully measure out each required amount. I on the other hand believe that these amounts and instructions are only suggestions which sometimes leads to tension in the kitchen, especially when my husband tries to write down one of the recipes that I have only in my head, and I can’t give him proper amounts and just say “as much as you need”. This also applies to the Mandelsplitter recipe because I honestly don’t know how much butter and honey I use. Somewhere between one and two tablespoons, I start out with one and add more when the almond slivers look too dry. Anyway, we made them last weekend, and they are delicious, even with my eyeball measurements. The taste of roasted almonds with a hint of caramelized honey, all covered in chocolate… yum!
A few words of caution/disclaimer: This is a German recipe. Germans measure only liquids by volume, solid ingredients are measured by weight. And everything is metric, of course. With the help of the internet I have provided the imperial measurements but there is no guarantee these are correct… it’s the internet after all. So if a number looks suspicious to you, please double check the math.
Quilting for others cuts into my own sewing time, and this year has been especially crazy with everybody cooped up at home, producing quilt top after quilt top. So in between getting them turned around as quickly as possible and trying to come up with a new BOM design for 2021 I did manage to make another Christmas mug rug called “Reindeer Romp”. The pattern is ready to go and will be published next week. Here is a little preview, and I am also giving away five digital copies of the pattern (English/Imperial measurements only). If you would like to win one, please leave a comment and enter the giveaway. Entries will be accepted until Monday (December 7, 2020, 11.59 PST), and I will announce the winners on Wednesday and email the patterns. Please scroll down to the end of the post for giveaway rules and guidelines.
Comment moderation is turned off for today to make it easier for you to enter the giveaway. But please don’t leave your email address in the comment text. It is not necessary to do so, and the spam protection software will kick in and not publish your comment, so it will have to be moderated after all. I will be happy to manually publish it but please keep in mind that I am in the Pacific time zone and will still be asleep when this post publishes.
Thank you for visiting today, and please make sure that you visit all the participants of this blog hop and look at their fabulous projects and mouthwatering cookies. Here is the full schedule of all four days of the event.
You must leave a comment to enter the giveaway. If you don’t leave a comment, your winning entry will be ignored and cancelled.
You are only allowed to enter once.
The winners will be announced either on Wednesday, December 9 or Thursday, December 10, 2020.
You must give a valid email address when you enter the giveaway. Any email returned to me loses the ability to win automatically.
I will email the digital patterns to the winners right away. Please check your spam folders if you are announced as one of the winners and didn’t receive an email. Especially Gmail likes to send anything I send straight to the spam folder.
No purchase whatsoever is necessary.
You must be 18+ in order to win a gift.
All winners are chosen at random.
All winners will be announced on the blog via the Rafflecopter entry form and a post. All winners must allow for their first name and first initial of their last name to be announced on this blog.
Odds of winning a prize are based on the total number of rafflecopter entries.
And here we go: It’s December, and this is the last block of my Penguin Promenade BOM 2020. This last little guy is going down the mountain on his snowboard. I went with the brown fabrics that I used for the sled but you can use your imagination and give him all kinds of crazy board colours. Dig into your scrap bins! I hope you had as much fun with this project as I did. Remember that I will email you the finishing instructions if you send me pictures of your finished blocks until the end of March 2021. My email address can be found on the first page of every pattern. (Edit: As announced earlier, the finishing instructions will be available for purchase in January for those who can’t meet the March deadline.) (Edit 2: You can send me your pictures anytime, and you will receive a confirmation email. The finishing instructions will be mailed out in January when they are published.) As for the new BOM, it’s coming along nicely, and I am almost ready to announce it but not quite yet. Stay tuned, it shouldn’t be long. I am also quite confident that I will be able to publish the first block in January. Probably on the first of the month, as usual, or if I need a bit more time, I’ll switch it to mid-month and publish all blocks on the 15th. Either way, I will announce the details soon.
Don’t forget that the Virtual Cookie Exchange Blog Hop also starts today. I am going to post on the last day which is Friday. Head on over to Carol’s blog Just Let Me Quilt to see the schedule and visit the participants’ sites for yummy recipes and lots of fun stuff. And please come back on Friday for my recipe (lots of chocolate!) and a giveaway.
The last Penguin block will be available for free download until the end of the month and move to the pattern store in January.
EDIT: The Penguin Promenade BOM is now finished. Any patterns you might have missed are available for purchase in the store section, including the last block #9. I have also created another pattern bundle at a discount price. The finishing instructions are available separately for those who are not going to make the deadline for sending in pictures of their finished penguin blocks. And of course the pattern for the whole quilt is also available for purchase as of now. Don’t forget to check out my new BOM for 2021 “Monkey Business” and download the free patterns every month.
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.
