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.

Click to download Mandelsplitter recipe

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.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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.

Giveaway Rules and Guidelines

Please take the time to read them.

• • 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.
  • This giveaway is void where prohibited by law.

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.) 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.

Click to download Penguin Promenade Block #9 pattern (English/Imperial)

When Sharon’s son got married last year, she prepared some muslin, cut it into heart shapes, embroidered the couple’s names and the date of their wedding and had the wedding guests write their good wishes for the bride and groom on it. For their first wedding anniversary, she turned the wedding wishes into this colourful quilt. What a great gift and keepsake! The heart panto I used for quilting it is called “Signed, Sealed, Delivered”.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are upon us, and I am also having a sale again with a super creative discount code 😉 Enter the code BLACK2020 during checkout and receive a 20% discount on your purchase. The coupon code is valid until Nov 30, 2020 11.59 pm PST and works only on this website (and not on other platforms I might be selling my patterns on). Happy shopping!

This stunning quilt was made by Chere. She meticulously pieced hundreds of tiny bow tie blocks and put them together to form a secondary pattern. Truly a labour of love! The pantograph she chose is called “Jessie’s Swirls Simplified”.

A while ago I mentioned our guild’s “Cynthia Challenge”, named after one of our members who had donated a lot of 2″ squares. Gail’s “Scrappy Chains” was the first project I quilted that was made from Cynthia’s squares. Naida was also up to the challenge, and this lovely quilt is her result. This is another great pattern to keep in mind for using up scraps. I especially love the scrappy border, it pulls it all together nicely. The pantograph I used is called “Ginger Flower”.

Nola made this cuddly quilt as a gift for a little space traveler. Maybe a future astronaut? The fabrics speak for themselves, and the quilt is rather busy, so not much quilting was needed. The pantograph with the loops and stars we chose is called “Starry Night”, and I have used it on quite a few space-themed quilts. I only make one small change. The original pattern has a moon with a face which looks cute on baby quilts but is not really suitable for older space enthusiasts. I just quilt a curve instead of the mouth and nose shapes and turn the moon into a plain crescent.

This colourful quilt was made by Sandra. Don’t you just love quilts with alternating blocks that create a secondary pattern? Sometimes you have to take a step back to be able to see it. I always enjoy when something unexpected shows up after all the blocks are put together. Sandra chose a leaf pattern for her quilt, this one is called “Wedding Vine”.

Ruth made this quilt that she calls “Bella” from a Jelly Roll. What a neat pattern to use up strips! She started it a couple of years ago, and pandemic restrictions finally gave her the time she needed to finish it earlier this year. The pantograph she chose for her project is called “Ginger Flower”.

Last year when I published my Pansies, Snowdrops and Sunflower patterns, I mentioned that someone at the Chilliwack quilt show had asked if I had a poinsettia pattern. I didn’t have one but I thought that maybe I would like to come up with a few more of those flower wall hangings. A year has come and gone, and Christmas is around the corner, so it was time for me to get to work or postpone it to next year. I am happy to announce that I did not procrastinate this time and am ready to publish my Poinsettia pattern. There is plenty of time to get this done before Christmas. I am really enjoying this flower series and have already received another request, this time for violets. Inspiration hasn’t struck yet but I will definitely give it some thought.

Click to purchase Poinsettia pattern (English/Imperial)

Die Anleitung für den Weihnachtsstern ist auch auf Deutsch/in metrischen Maßen erhältlich.

(Kauf)Anleitung Weihnachtsstern (Deutsch/Metrisch)

In less than four weeks it’s time again for the Virtual Cookie Exchange! Carol of Just Let Me Quilt is hosting this blog hop again, and I have signed up for this fun event with lots of delicious recipes and Christmas projects. I already know which recipe I am going to feature. If you are a chocolate lover, this one is for you, and it doesn’t even involve any baking! So mark your calendars and make sure you don’t miss the fun (and the calories).

Can you believe it’s November already, and we have only one block left until the Penguins are complete? 2020 is a very strange year. Sometimes time doesn’t seem to pass at all with all the Covid restrictions and no place to go, and then you turn around, and it’s been eight months and we are getting ready for Christmas. With next year looming in the not so distant future, you are probably wondering if there will be another block of the month next year. The answer is, I am working on something but I haven’t made as much progress as I would have liked, there just aren’t enough hours in the day. I might or might not be able to publish the first block on January 1, stay tuned for further updates, I will announce the start date as soon as I can.

Back to our Penguins, this month’s block features a snowball fight. That was one of the first winter activities that came to mind but it turned out to be more difficult than I thought to come up with a fairly simple design for the block. So here we go, our snowball-throwing buddy is about to get hit in the face by an incoming snowball. The block is available for free download until the end of the month and will be moved to the pattern store in December when the final block is released.

EDIT: Block #8 is now available for purchase in the pattern store if you missed the free download in November

Click to purchase Penguin Promenade Block #8 pattern (English/Imperial)

EDIT: Auch Block #8 gibt es jetzt auf Deutsch. Die Anleitung ist als Kaufmuster im Pattern Store zu finden.

(Kauf)Anleitung Penguin Promenade Block #8 (Deutsch/Metrisch)