This quilt was also made by the very talented Brenda. These are not Brenda’s usual colours, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about the quilt but I think it turned out great. It is a gift for a little girl who loves pink and purple, so it should be perfect for her. Brenda asked for custom quilting, and I had a lot of fun with it.

Sandra’s friend Darlene made a Bargello quilt a couple of years ago called “Twist and Turn Bargello”. Sandra loved it so much that she decided to make her own version. She chose a maritime theme and lovely blue fabrics for her quilt. It was quilted with the design “Taj Mahal”, a simple design that adds great texture.

After quilting all day long for others, it is sometimes not so easy to find the motivation to work on my own projects at night, especially when they require paying attention. Mindless chain piecing on the other hand can be quite relaxing, and I always have scraps at hand to turn into donation quilts. I started this quilt using my favourite scrappy pattern last summer and was surprised how fast I finished the top. Sneaking it into the quilt line up on the other hand is sometimes a bit tricky. I managed to squeeze it in at some point, and this quilt has already been donated to our guild’s We Care program. This morning, when I put the border on the next scrappy donation top, I realized that I had never posted pictures of this one, so here they are.

This lovely quilt made from a fabric line designed by Edyta Sitar of Laundry Basket Quilts was made by Brenda. Isn’t it amazing what you can do with just Four Patch blocks and Half-Square Triangles? I love watching the secondary pattern emerge, and this is an especially nice one. The quilting design Brenda chose for her project is called “Paisley Curls”.

Do you know what a Crumb Quilt is? I have to admit that I had never heard of the technique until Carol dropped off this quilt for quilting and told me about it. It seems to be similar to a crazy quilt but without the embellishments, and it is a great way to get rid of your scraps. There are lots of tutorials online on how to get started. The nature of this technique makes Crumb Quilts very busy, of course, and the quilting will get lost. “Taj Mahal” was an excellent choice for Carol’s quilt, it adds some texture and stabilizes everything without trying to overshadow the quilt top.

This lovely quilt was made by June. She chose a modern, simple design called “Taj Mahal” for quilting which adds very nice texture. The colours don’t look right to me in the pictures, the quilt definitely had a summer feel, and this looks more like spring. Too much pink, I guess, but I am done fiddling around with Photoshop. It is a very pretty quilt in any colour.

As promised, here is the gallery of finished Penguin Promenade blocks. I enjoy looking at them, all the different fabrics, all the small things that are a bit different, so much to see, what fun! If you click on the first thumbnail, it will take you to the slideshow view of the gallery, and you can see a bigger picture. I will add more pictures as they come in. I will send out the finishing instructions to those who qualify at the same time, so when you see your picture in the gallery, you know I have emailed the instructions. Please check your spam folder or even better, add my email address to your contact list, so the email won’t be marked as spam in the first place.

If you are looking for my email address to send in your finished Penguin blocks, it can be found on the cover page of every pattern, on the left-hand side at the bottom, underneath the fabric requirements. Please DO NOT use the contact form or Facebook comments/messages to ask me for my email address. I do not have the time to email it to everyone individually. These requests will be ignored. Thank you for understanding.

And now grab a cup of coffee and enjoy our little Penguin Promenade:

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.

Click to purchase Penguin Promenade Finishing Instructions Pattern (English/Imperial)

Click to purchase Penguin Promenade Quilt Complete Pattern (English/Imperial)

(Kauf)Anleitung Penguin Promenade Fertigstellung des Quilts (Deutsch/Metrisch)

(Kauf)Anleitung Penguin Promenade Quilt Komplett (Deutsch/Metrisch)

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 Englisch/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!

Click to download Monkey Business Block #1 pattern (English/Imperial)

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.