Appliqué - Pumpkin Patch

Tuxedo Cats BOM – Block #12

Beatrice | December 1, 2019 | 32 Comments

Welcome to December and the last block of the Tuxedo Cat BOM. This pattern includes instructions on how to make the sashing and assemble the quilt. If you missed downloading any of the blocks, now is the time to get them. The Black Friday coupon code is still valid for 20% off until tomorrow. (Scroll down to see the Black Friday Sale post for the coupon code.)

In other news, I am not going to start another BOM on January 1. I really, really want to but I have decided to be reasonable and not jump into another big project right away. All year long I have been complaining about how busy I am and how I am always behind. In addition to that I have been having health issues for the second half of the year and I also took over as president of the Chilliwack Piecemakers Quilting Guild. Don’t ask me why… somebody had to step up and do it, and I like doing it but it does add to my workload.

But the main reason is that I just need to take some time to catch up. If you downloaded all my BOM blocks you might have noticed that I changed my layout earlier this year. I had a reason for this, and a big one as well. My patterns were accepted by QuiltWoman.com last December for sale on their website. If you haven’t heard about them, they sell patterns in digital and printed formats, and they sell to everyone – retail, wholesale, distributors and also chains like JoAnn’s. But they have certain format requirements including fonts and page layout. Almost a year has gone by, and I haven’t managed to edit very many of my patterns to match their requirements. So instead of working on new things (which would be much more fun, I admit) I will take the time to edit my patterns for their website before another year comes and goes and I still haven’t made any progress. We will see how long it takes, I am hoping that maybe by April I will be ready to start another BOM project. But if not, I will just work on it for as long as it takes. (And for those who keep telling me I don’t owe any of you an explanation… I know 🙂 This is mostly pep talk for myself. My main business is still longarm quilting but I almost enjoy the pattern part more and have to keep telling myself to focus.)

But enough of my ramblings, here are the links to the last patterns with the finishing instructions.

EDIT: The month of free download is over, and the block has moved to the pattern store where it is now available for purchase.

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.

Pattern

New Pattern: Coffee Break Mug Rugs

Beatrice | November 27, 2019 | Leave a Comment

Yay, I made my self-imposed deadline… this is the last unpublished pattern that I have been selling at quilt shows in the paper version. This is actually the oldest one, I have been selling it for over a year. As you can tell by looking at the mug rugs, this is the first pattern I designed after buying the Brother ScanNCut last year. I was so excited by the possibilities that I didn’t consider how difficult it would be to manually cut out the words “Coffee Break” in that fancy font I used. I ended up selling two versions of the pattern, either printed pattern only or printed pattern with the precut words included. Since I am only offering digital versions of my patterns online, I have added the cutting file for the words to the pattern download, in both SVG and FCM file format. They are included as a courtesy to those who have cutting machines, and there is no additional cost. If you don’t own a fabric cutter, just ignore the additional files.

Die Anleitung für die Coffee Break Mug Rugs ist auf deutsch nicht verfügbar.

Pattern

New Patterns: Pansies, Snowdrops and Sunflower

Beatrice | November 24, 2019 | Leave a Comment

Today I am publishing three new patterns at once. Two of them are not particularly new, the Pansies and Snowdrops are based on postcards I made about ten years ago and then recreated for the Quilt Canada Postcard Challenge in 2017. I resized them and turned them into wall hangings. The Sunflower is a completely new design that I created this August. Our neighbours had some beautiful sunflowers in their yard that I could see when I was sitting at my desk working at the computer, and I thought they might make a nice addition to the flower series. At the quilt show in October somebody asked if I had a Poinsettia as well. I didn’t, and I still don’t have one but I still have some of the background fabric I used for the appliqué, and I like the idea of adding more patterns to this series, so I have made a note of the Poinsettia request and will wait for inspiration.

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.

Pattern

New Pattern: Sleeping Kitty Pillow

Beatrice | November 16, 2019 | Leave a Comment

As promised (or at least as planned), here is the other Tuxedo Cat pillow pattern. My favourite block is block #5 with the sleeping kitty. I am really happy with this design, I still think you can almost see her paws twitching, and those little pink paw pads are just adorable. This will be the last Tuxedo Cat block to be turned into a separate pillow pattern. As with the other pillow, I enlarged the block to 12″ instead of 10″ to make handling those small pieces easier. I have four more patterns left to publish and two weeks to go until Black Friday, I will try to have them all up on the website by then.

Pattern

New Pattern: Tuxedo Cat Pillow

Beatrice | November 9, 2019 | Leave a Comment

Here is the next of the patterns that I finished quite some time ago but never posted on the website: a Tuxedo Cat Pillow. If you have been following the Tuxedo Cats BOM, you will recognize this kitty from the first block that I published back in January. It is just a 12″ block instead of a 10″ one, and the Flying Geese border is 3″ instead of the 2.5″ from the quilt. I had planned to do a separate pillow pattern from the beginning. Not everyone is such a cat lover that they need a quilt with twelve different blocks, and this is also a great gift for the favourite cat lover in your life. I started selling the printed pattern at the Abbotsford show back in April, and it was a big hit, the patterns sold out right away. Over the summer I turned another block of the quilt into a pillow pattern, I am hoping to post this one next week, so stay tuned.

Block/Pattern of the Month

Tuxedo Cats BOM – Block #11

Beatrice | October 31, 2019 | 11 Comments

For the first time ever, I am publishing a block early. I will be busy square dancing all weekend, and I don’t want to have to deal with it first thing next week, especially since the Christmas rush is picking up speed, so here is a nice little treat for Halloween. Well, maybe not… it still is October 31 here as I am writing this, and the trick or treating hasn’t even really started yet but for most of you it is already November. Can you believe there is only one block left? I am still undecided if I want to do another BOM next year. I have more ideas than I can ever handle, I just have to decide if I want to put that pressure on myself for another year. I will think about it this month, stay tuned. For November, we have a jumping kitty. Isn’t it amazing how high they can jump just like that? A very long time ago, when I was living in my first apartment back in Germany where we don’t usually have built in closets, I had a big wardrobe in a nook near the entrance door. When I moved out and we took it apart, I discovered paw prints in the dust on top of it. I still don’t know how my silly cat managed to jump up there, I would have sworn it was too high but still she did it. She also managed to fall behind a china cabinet once and get trapped there but that’s a story for another day 😀 The November block will be available for free download until the end of the month and move to the store section when the final block is published in December.

EDIT: The month of free download is over, and the block has moved to the pattern store where it is now available for purchase.

Pattern

New Pattern: Boo! Mug Rugs

Beatrice | October 23, 2019 | Leave a Comment

As promised in my previous post, I am working on adding my new patterns to the website. Today I am starting with the newest, a Halloween pattern that I just finished writing, it isn’t available in a printed version yet. We did a mug rug swap at our guild meeting this month, and although a Halloween design wasn’t required, this is what I came up with. These little guys make me laugh, aren’t they super cute? They don’t take long to make, you can still finish them in time for Halloween.

Dieses Muster ist auch auf Deutsch/metrisch verfügbar. Ich weiß, ich weiß, ich hatte gesagt, ich veröffentliche keine deutschen Muster mehr, aber dann setzte plötzlich ein Run auf die Ginger & Fred Mug Rugs ein, also habe ich probeweise doch wieder eine deutsche Anleitung geschrieben.

Quilt Show

Quilt Show Impressions

Beatrice | October 21, 2019 | 8 Comments

I was busy all day with my booth but I went in early on Saturday morning to take a quick look at the show that I had helped set up. Quite a few quilts in the show had been quilted by me, and I tried to take pictures of the others, so I would have something to show that you haven’t seen here before. It was a great show, lots of amazing quilts. The only big quilt I had in the show was the finished sample of the Tuxedo Cats. Two blocks haven’t been published yet but here is a preview of what the finished quilt looks like.

My booth was right next to the entrance, and everybody had to pass me on their way to the hall with the big quilts. It started a little slow but around lunch time on Saturday things got very busy and stayed that way almost until the end of the show. Looking at the pictures of my booth, I realized that I have several patterns that I have been selling at shows but never uploaded to the website or even mentioned here on my blog. I will start working on that… we’ll see how that goes with the Christmas rush coming up. One gentleman was in awe of my Pansies pattern, he loved the colours and how realistic the flowers look, and after he had seen the show he came back to my booth because he wanted to vote for my Pansies as Best in Show 🙂 He was very disappointed when I told him he had to find another favourite quilt since my sample was not part of the actual show.

Encounters like this one make up for the negative parts. Somebody actually stole from me this time. Three patterns went missing and haven’t turned up. I also stopped someone trying to walk away with another three and made them pay for what they picked. It might have been an honest mistake but judging by their behaviour (which had made me watch them in the first place) I don’t think so. I usually just have one bin of patterns out for people to dig through, and that makes it easy to watch and pay attention to where the patterns go. This time I had three, apparently that was too much for the busy time. Next time I will be prepared and go back to just one bin.

But enough ranting, it was a great show, we had a lot of fun, and I enjoyed those two days very much. Here are a few impressions of the show, I hope you enjoy them as well.

Longarm

I Woolly Love Ewe

Beatrice | October 3, 2019 | 14 Comments

Isn’t this just the cutest quilt? I was thrilled when Wendy asked me to custom quilt it for her. There was so much negative space to fill, block background, sashing, borders, I had a lot of fun playing with it and coming up with different designs for the different areas. Wendy provided the picture of the finished quilt, and I have permission to share it. I agree with the little girl, the black sheep was my favourite too 🙂

Several people have asked for the pattern, I didn’t design this quilt, I just quilted it. The designer’s name is Janet Stone, and it was published in Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting magazine, in the Jan/Feb 2009 issue. It looks like it is still available as a digital edition here.

Block/Pattern of the Month

Tuxedo Cats BOM – Block #10

Beatrice | October 1, 2019 | 15 Comments

October is quilt show month in Chilliwack which means I am super busy again. I didn’t do much in September, my mom was visiting from Germany, and it was her first visit to North America. We took her on a nice trip down to Seattle, Mount Rainier and the Olympic Peninsula, then took the ferry back to Vancouver Island and spent a few days there. Then I dragged her with me to quilt guild meetings and square dancing, and we also went up to Kelowna where our son is going to school at UBC Okanagan. We had a few very rainy days but overall we were lucky with the weather… a week later, and there would have been snow on the Coquihalla (that’s the Highway Thru Hell, if you are familiar with the TV show). We had a great time, and after she left I discovered that I had nothing left to do for this month’s BOM pattern other than write this post. Looks like I was well organized ahead of time, and I don’t even remember 🙂 As always, the pattern will be available for free download until the end of the month and move over to the store section when the November block is published.

EDIT: The month of free download is over, and the block has moved to the pattern store where it is now available for purchase.