After a cold and wet June, July came with nicer weather, and it has been really hot for the past week or so. It feels a bit weird to be working on skiing and skating penguins when it’s 35 degrees outside. Celsius… that would be in the mid-90s Fahrenheit, I believe. I have never been a winter person, and I don’t like snow. Unless it is on the mountains and stays up there, then it’s pretty. And while I like skating, I have never learned how to ski. I gave it a try once, maybe ten years ago or so but I never got the hang of it. I believe that it is easier to learn when you are young and don’t even think about falling down and not being able to get up again or break a leg. My husband has been skiing all his life, and our son was a quick learner and went down the slopes in no time, and I decided that it was better to let them do their thing and not get in the way. I’d rather be quilting anyway.

In garden news, I lost a bunch of broccoli plants to the cabbage root fly. They were doing just fine, and then just fell over one day. Those little maggots had munched all the roots right off. Two plants were either not infected or strong enough to survive, in any case I harvested two nice crowns of broccoli last week, and they were so good. Now I am waiting for the tomatoes to turn red. I have a whole jungle of tomato plants with lots of green ones on the vines but no sign of red yet. The potato plants are all gone, I removed the last dried up stalks and leaves last week. Since I am not very patient, I already dug up some potatoes, I had to make sure there were some, right? I prefer firm potatoes, and this is a quite mealy variety but they make excellent mashies. Considering that I had no clue about gardening when I decided to do this in March, my first season is going quite well.

Okay, now back to winter and our penguin buddies. This month’s block features a penguin on a sled, all dressed up in matching ear muffs, mittens and a bow tie. The block will be available for free download until the end of the month and move to the store section in September.

Click to download Penguin Promenade Block #5 pattern (English/Imperial)

One of our guild members, Cynthia, cut up all her scraps into 2″ squares. She then decided that she didn’t feel like sewing all those tiny squares together again and donated them to the guild. The We Care committee divided them and packed them into bags, and anyone who wanted to could take a bag home and turn the squares into a scrappy quilt. Gail accepted the “Cynthia Challenge”, and this “Scrappy Chains” quilt is the result. The pantograph is “Diagonal Plaid Bias Cut”. I thought it picked up the on-point squares of the chains very well and filled all that negative space nicely.

“It’s All An Illusion” is the name of this Missouri Star Quilt Company pattern. Mary made her elegant version in lovely blues. The pantograph we chose is called “Overlapping Crop Circles”, I love the texture it creates, and all thoses curves soften the angles and straight lines of the pieced top.

Donna made this quilt in bright colours using a fairly simple but very effective layout. It works well to showcase large prints and creates a nice secondary pattern. The pantograph we chose is called “Wedding Vine”.

This king size log cabin quilt in neutral colours was made by Paige. Isn’t it just beautiful? It is no secret that I usually love bright colours but I find the calm elegance of this quilt very appealing. Paige wanted a traditional design for this traditional quilt pattern, and we chose “Feathered Curls” for her quilt.

Another cute baby quilt, this one has a modern touch and was made by Mary. The pantograph we chose, Taj Mahal, is very close to the shapes in the outer border fabric which made it perfect for this project. It adds texture but stays in the background, and the quilting is on the lighter side which keeps the quilt soft and cuddly.

This darling little quilt was made by Barb as a baby shower gift. Isn’t that little guy just the cutest? The hearts scattered across the top made choosing a pantograph easy, this design is called “Signed, Sealed, Delivered”.

This lovely modern quilt was made by Amanda. “Eclectic Elements” is the name of the Free Spirit fabric line designed by Tim Holtz that she used for her project. Amanda asked for an overall swirly design, and “Wild Wind” worked well with her quilt.

Debra made this colourful collection of I Spy quilts as gifts for her grandchildren. She collected suitable fabrics for several years and even bought some assortments on eBay until she had enough to make five quilts. Each of the quilts has a different border colour, so they can’t be mixed up. All five were quilted with the pantograph “Wild Wind”.

Lisa loves English Paper Piecing and made this fabulous quilt called “Emma Mary”, pattern by Judy Newman. There is a bit of custom quilting in the centre medallion to enhance all those lovely hexies. For the pieced blocks around the centre we decided that they were busy enough and detailed quilting would only get lost, so I used a pantograph in this area. The design is called ” Paisley Curls”.

If you wondered what happened to the Happy Hippo quilt, I did finish the top in a timely manner. And I was ready to quilt it over the May long weekend. I had to fix the backing because I hadn’t considered that the fabric was directional, and it was very distorted. After spending half a day on calculations and straightening the fabric and sewing it all together until it was finally ready to go on the longarm, I realized that I was very low on the turquoise thread that I wanted to use for the majority of the quilt.

I decided to postpone the quilting rather than risking running out of thread in the middle of the project. And I can’t just run out to the next store to get more thread as I order wholesale from a distributor in Ontario. Anyway, the thread arrived in the meantime, and I finally quilted the top last weekend. And wouldn’t you know it… I had just enough turquoise thread left to finish the quilt and didn’t need the new spool. But I am sure if I had taken the risk and started quilting without another spool for backup, I would have run into trouble. Oh well, at least it’s finally done. Now on to the binding!

Happy Canada Day! We had really bad weather during the first half of June, cold and wet, and while the spinach still decided to bolt, I had little hope for my remaining cucumbers. But as soon as the weather changed, the first flowers appeared on the cucumbers, and they seem quite content by now. The tomatoes ignored the weather as well and have apparently decided to outgrow their cages as quickly as possible. They are in a rather dry spot close to the house but I didn’t think they would grow that much while it was so cold. In other gardening news, I have decided to try to grow Brussels sprouts. I belong to the 50% of the population who cannot taste anything bitter in Brussels sprouts and have always liked them. And I know they grow around here, you can see them in the fields awaiting harvest in late autumn. I had to order the seeds online, I guess this is not a very popular crop. As you can tell, I am having a lot of fun with my garden experiments.

But you are not here for my veggie stories, so let’s move on to this month’s penguin. July means Canada Day, and Canada means hockey. So of course the July block had to feature this favourite winter pastime and Canada’s official national winter sport. I realize the little guy should be dressed in red and white and not in blue but it didn’t look right in the final layout of the quilt. So I have decided to have him play in Vancouver Canucks colours instead. The hockey penguin will be available for free download until the end of the month and then move to the store section to make room for August’s free block.

EDIT: If you missed the free download of the July block, it is now available for purchase in the pattern store.

Click to purchase Penguin Promenade Block #4 pattern (English/Imperial)

EDIT: Auch Block 4 ist jetzt als Kaufmuster auf Deutsch und in metrischen Maßen im Shop verfügbar.

(Kauf)Anleitung Penguin Promenade Block #4 (Deutsch/Metrisch)