This quilt was made by Sandra as a gift for her mom. The fabric she used for the sashing has grape leaves, and those inspired the choice of quilting pattern. “Ground Cover” is one of my favourite leaf patterns, the leaves look a bit like ivy but can also pass as grape leaves and were just right for this quilt.

I am going to make an effort to return to a more normal posting schedule. First up is another round of Show & Tell. Elaine has been busy making more Monkey blocks, here are her April, May and June blocks.

Sigrid has been busy as well, and I really enjoy the different custom backgrounds she creates for her Monkeys. Here are the next three blocks she stitched.

Thank you to both ladies for faithfully sending me a picture every month. I very much enjoy seeing what others make with my designs.

Happy Canada Day! As you can probably tell by the silence on my blog, my life is still very much in disarray. I am hoping to return to some kind of normal during July, but it might take until August to sort everything out. In addition to the emotional upset we spent the last few days under the heat dome in the Pacific Northwest, and no, we don’t have air conditioning. It was no fun but the worst seems to be over, and I managed to keep my vegetables well watered, and they all seem to be doing quite well. The spinach and corn salad bolted before the extreme heat, I had a great broccoli and cauliflower harvest, and the beans, cucumbers and squash seemed to love the weather. I am grateful every day that I continued with my vegetable garden experiment this year, it really helps me keep my sanity.

This month’s monkey is going on safari. This was the block that my husband thought was the most hilarious… a monkey in full safari outfit. But hey, he wants to see the animals too, right?? Coming up with ideas for twelve different blocks is not always easy, and sometimes I just start drawing and it takes me in a direction that I hadn’t really planned. I think for this block I was more thinking of a monkey going on a hike but when his hat ended up looking like a pith helmet I thought it was funny and went with it. As always, the safari monkey block will be available for free download until the end of the month and move to the pattern store in August when the next block is released.

Click to download Monkey Business Block #7 pattern (English/Imperial)

Life is happening in full force right now, disrupting all my plans, unfortunately not in a good way. Blogging and sharing pictures on social media is not high on my list of priorities at the moment. I am spending some of my energy on my vegetables, puttering around the garden makes me feel quite calm and relaxed. I have blanched and frozen a lot of spinach already, trying to get the most out of it before it bolts. The Super Gourmet Salad Blend from West Coast Seeds that KJ mentioned in a comment a couple of months back was my choice this year too, and I love it. Excellent results, and very tasty too. I did have a few mishaps though and killed all my cucumbers and most of my squash plants, and I also overwatered my tomato seedlings but I have learned that they are like weeds and very hard to kill. I transplanted them two weeks ago, and they made a very nice recovery. And I am very happy about the brassicas. We went through the trouble of building a cover for the whole bed, with rebar and PVC pipes (lots of good tutorials can be found on YouTube), and I bought some row cover fabric and a soaker hose. The brassicas are thriving in there, the cabbage moths and root flies can’t get in, and I haven’t seen any aphids yet (fingers crossed). The plants are huge and healthy, and the first florets are coming up on the broccoli. Even my own whimpy seedlings aren’t far behind the ones I bought at Minter’s. Last year I lost all but two broccoli plants to the maggots of the cabbage root fly. They just started drooping one day and keeled over the next, and when I pulled them, there were barely any roots left. So hopefully I will have a better harvest this year.

I will keep posting quilts when I have the time, and the Monkey Business BOM will continue as planned. The patterns are all written and will be published on the first of each month. Should I have to post a bit early or late, I will announce it in advance, so stay tuned for updates. This month, our monkey friend is still at the beach, playing ball and having a blast. The pattern is available for free download until the end of the month and will move over to the pattern store in July when the next block is published.

EDIT: Block #6 has moved to the store and is available for purchase now for those who missed the free download. I have also created block bundles for the last three blocks (# 4, 5 and 6) and all six blocks at a special discount price.

Click to purchase Monkey Business Block #6 pattern (English/Imperial)

Click to purchase Monkey Business pattern bundle 4, 5 & 6 (English/Imperial)

Click to purchase Monkey Business pattern bundle 1-6 (English/Imperial)

Block #6 ist jetzt auch auf Deutsch und in metrischen Maßen erhältlich. Es gibt auch wieder Blockbündel zum Sonderpreis, entweder die Blöcke 4, 5 und 6 oder die ersten sechs Blöcke komplett.

(Kauf)Anleitung Monkey Business Block #6 (Deutsch/Metrisch)

(Kauf)Anleitungsbündel Monkey Business 4, 5 & 6 (Deutsch/Metrisch)

(Kauf)Anleitungsbündel Monkey Business 1-6 (Deutsch/Metrisch)

“Over The River And Through The Woods” is a Crabapple Hill design, mixing hand-embroidered panels with classic pieced blocks. This lovely version was made by Sandra, and she chose “White Out”, a snowflake pattern for quilting. I wasn’t always comfortable doing allover designs across beautiful hand embroidery but Sandra’s quilt is a great example of how good it can look. The snowflake meander blends into the background and doesn’t take away from the exquisite handwork.

Sharlene made this cute quilt as a baby gift. What a great way of using up scraps, the more different fabrics, the better! The empty areas between the kites will be filled by their tails, Sharlene wanted to have it quilted first before starting on the embroidery. The pattern we used for quilting is called “Wild Wind” – perfect for flying a kite!

June made this pretty star quilt using linen in solid colours for the stars. The quilt has a modern look, and June wanted a simple, modern design for quilting and picked the pantograph “Taj Mahal” for her project.

This quilt was made by Mary as a gift for a music loving friend. Actually, she made it twice for two different friends. It sure gives a whole new meaning to the term “piano key border”. We didn’t have to think about the quilting very long, I have a music pattern with notes that was perfect for Mary’s quilts.

May made this cute little baby quilt with pinwheels in bright colours. The outer border fabric has dragonflies which would have been a perfect quilting pattern. Unfortunately I don’t have a pantograph with dragonflies, and I couldn’t find one that I liked, so we went with butterflies instead and used “Butterfly Tango”. What a sweet baby gift!

There are lots of ideas out there for selvage quilts but I particularly like this one that Gail made and asked me to quilt for her. The grey and white frames give the illusion of spools and make the quilt three dimensional. I just can’t stop looking at it, if I ever decide to make a selvage quilt, this would be my pattern choice. (Not going to happen anytime soon… I am not even collecting selvages.) The pantograph I used is called “Celtic Scroll”, a simple swirly pattern that stays in the background but adds movement to the design.

This is Kathy’s version of the Chilliwack Quilters’ Guild Block of the Month Sampler and the last of the three that I quilted for members. Ellen’s version can be found here, and Janet’s quilt was featured here. Kathy chose lovely blue fabrics for her blocks and also liked “Ginger Flower” as the quilting pattern.

April was a crazy month! It started with a pleasant surprise, I received a letter that because of my health issues I was considered “clinically extremely vulnerable” and was asked to book a vaccine appointment. Well, they didn’t have to ask me twice! I was very impressed by how well it was organized, there was no wait time at all, and everybody was friendly and cheerful. Then we had two weeks of summer. Yes, you read that correctly, from one day to the next the temperatures jumped up to summer highs. It still cooled down quickly once the sun set but it was very nice during the day. My veggies liked the weather as much as I did, and everything is growing nicely. And then, on a Friday night, my machine broke down. Not the machine itself but the computer control unit, and I had to ship it back to the company in Ohio. I had it back a week later, and while it was booting again, it kept crashing every ten minutes. So once again I had to send it in and wait for its return. The second repair luckily worked, and my machine is up and running again, and I have been quilting like crazy to catch up. Of course this happens in the middle of a pandemic when nobody has anywhere to go and they all keep bringing quilts and I am booked for weeks and weeks. I am very organized, and I can always manage a week of unexpected downtime but two weeks with the bookings I have right now just wasn’t possible. Everyone affected has been very patient, and one lady even moved her quilts to the end of the queue to give me some breathing room, so I am almost caught up by now. Next week I should be back to my normal quilting schedule, but I still have lots of other things to sort out that I just didn’t have the time for. I am really looking forward to the weekend!

As for our monkey friends, this month the little guy is ready for some snorkeling. I have only ever once tried snorkeling, a long time ago in Hawaii, and it was a wonderful experience. I would love to do it again some day. All those colourful fish, and we even saw a turtle swim by. Great memories! If you have been following me and my designs for a while, you know that I love bright colours. My monkey has turquoise and purple accessories this month, but you can pick whatever colours you like. There will be lots of different colours in the remaining blocks, and you don’t need to follow my choices, you can’t really go wrong here. As always, the pattern will be available for free download until the end of the month and then move to the store section when the June block is released.

EDIT: Another month has come and gone, and the fifth block is now available for purchase if you missed the free download in May.

Click to purchase Monkey Business Block #5 pattern (English/Imperial)

EDIT: Auch der fünfte Block ist jetzt auf Deutsch und mit metrischen Maßen als Kaufmuster im Pattern Store erhältlich.

(Kauf)Anleitung Monkey Business Block #5 (Deutsch/Metrisch)