Mary made this small quilt with eight-pointed stars as a gift for a friend. I had fun filling all the negative space between the stars, it was a fast and satisfying project to work on.

Eight-Pointed Stars

“Welcome Home” was made by Sharon, and as you can probably tell I had a lot of fun custom quilting it. This is such a sweet quilt with lots of details to discover… birds, dogs, cats and even sheep. Sharon added buttons and ric rac for details, and the sheep are three-dimensional. Truly a labour of love.

When I started playing around with bunny ideas last year for the new BOM, I got sidetracked and came up with a different bunny pattern. I quite liked it even though it wasn’t suitable at all for a BOM. I have been working on it on and off, and the pattern is now ready to be released. The Bunny Buddies are simple shapes, so if my usual tiny pieces are not your cup of tea or if you have never tried your hands at fusible appliqué, this is a great pattern to start with. You can even substitute the bunny tails for circles instead of the flower shapes that I used. I also created a matching pillow, I just love the bunny silhouettes, and especially the little guy with the floppy ear.

Both patterns are now available for purchase in the pattern store. I have also created a discount code, if you enter BUNNY20 you will get 20% off. The code is valid until May 20, 2022 (11.59 pm PDT) and applies to the Bunny Buddies and Bunny Buddies Pillow patterns only.

Click to purchase Bunny Buddies Quilt Pattern (English/Imperial)

Click to purchase Bunny Buddies Pillow Pattern (English/Imperial)

If you want both patterns, I have also created a bundle at a discount price that is valid until further notice.

Click to purchase Bunny Buddies Quilt & Pillow Pattern Bundle (English/Imperial)

Eine deutsche Version mit metrischen Maßen gibt es nur für das Kissen, für den Quilt lohnt sich der Aufwand für mich leider nicht. Der Discount Code BUNNY20 gilt natürlich auch für die deutsche Version.

(Kauf)Anleitung Hasenfreunde Kissen (Deutsch/Metrisch)

If you have been reading here for a while, you might remember Sharon who as a new quilter tackled everything with enthusiasm and made huge progress honing her skills in just a short time. She surprised me again by showing up with a beautiful Crabapple Hill quilt top, “Girls Getaway”, asking for custom quilting. I find these embroidered quilts much harder to quilt than pieced ones but I think I am getting the hang of it. Both Sharon and I were very happy with the way this one turned out.

Here is another quilt made by Bonnie, pieced birds on a modern grey background and a bit of negative space to fill. I free-motioned around the birds in my favourite Angela-Walters-technique (just pick a few designs and repeat them randomly). For the border I chose the design “Taj Mahal”. It looks a bit like a chain-link fence all around, doesn’t it?

Who still remembers my Rainbow Butterflies quilt? Or actually, even both of them? I made them a long time ago, before I started my first BOM here, so many of you probably weren’t stopping by at the time. The first Rainbow Butterflies quilt was made as a donation at the request of a local care home. You can read all about it here. I really liked what I came up with and decided to adjust the quilt size a bit and make a second one as a pattern sample. This is the final version of the Rainbow Butterflies quilt:

While I usually plan my quilt designs meticulously, I took a different approach for the Rainbow Butterflies and just made blocks in all colours, using whatever I could find in my scraps. When I had enough blocks, I started laying them out and shuffling them around until I was satisfied with the way it looked. This was still the original quilt that was donated later on. I had one pink block that I couldn’t fit in, it just didn’t work with the rest of the colours. I finally ended up stitching it to the back of the quilt with the label, and when I made my pattern sample I did not make another pink block.

But I still love pink and wanted to have a pink butterfly, so in December I finally made another pink block and turned it into a pillow. What a simple solution, and I should have come up with it a long time ago. Of course you don’t have to limit yourself to just one pillow or to a pink one, this is an excellent pattern to use up leftovers in any colour. Just sort them into light and dark values, and off you go.

I have also created a bundle with special pricing for those who would like both patterns for the quilt and matching pillow.

Click to purchase Butterfly Pillow Pattern (English/Imperial)

Click to purchase Rainbow Butterflies Pattern (English/Imperial)

Click to purchase Butterfly Pattern Bundle (Quilt & Pillow) (English/Imperial)

I have been planning to make a matching pillow for the Penguin Promenade quilt for quite a while, and I finally got around to it. I also made a second pillow featuring a curling penguin. This was suggested by Linda and her sister who thought that in Canada winter activities need to include curling. And of course they were right! In Germany, curling is something that you see every four years at the Olympic Games and then forget about it until next time, so it never even occurred to me when I was designing the blocks for the Penguin Promenade quilt. But I was happy to follow up on their suggestion and came up with this little guy.

I emailed Linda the pattern a few weeks ago, and she surprised me by putting the block together quickly and sending me a picture. Isn’t he cute?

Linda’s Curling Penguin

Patterns are available for both pillows in English and German. I have also created two bundles with special pricing, one with just the two pillows and one with both pillows and the full Penguin Promenade quilt for those who missed the free downloads in 2020.

Click to purchase Penguin Pillow pattern (English/Imperial)

Click to purchase Curling Penguin Pillow pattern (English/Imperial)

Click to purchase Penguin Pillow Pattern Bundle (English/Imperial)

Click to purchase Penguin Promenade Pattern Bundle (Quilt & Two Pillows) (English/Imperial)

Anleitungen für beide Kissen sind auch auf Deutsch und in metrischen Maßen erhältlich, entweder einzeln oder als Bündel zum Sonderpreis. Und für diejenigen, die den kostenlosen Download im Jahre 2020 verpasst haben, gibt es auch ein Sonderpreis-Bündel mit dem kompletten Penguin Promenade Quilt und beiden Kissen.

(Kauf)Anleitung Pinguin Kissen (Deutsch/Metrisch)

(Kauf)Anleitung Curling Pinguin Kissen (Deutsch/Metrisch)

(Kauf)Anleitung Pinguin Kissen Bündel (Deutsch/Metrisch)

(Kauf)Anleitung Penguin Promenade Bündel (Quilt & Zwei Kissen) (Deutsch/Metrisch)

After a year of monkey blocks, I finally present the full Monkey Business pattern, all twelve blocks including finishing instructions for those who missed most or all of the free downloads. I’ll even throw in a special discount code, enter MONKEY20 during checkout for a 20% discount. The code will be valid until January 10, 2022 11.59 PM PST. I had fun custom quilting the monkey blocks and tried to find a background filler for each block that works with the general theme of what the monkey is doing. The sashing and border fabrics are quite busy so the quilting isn’t very visible but overall I am very happy with the result. Bright and beautiful, just the way I like it!

Click to purchase Monkey Business Quilt Complete Pattern (English/Imperial)

(Kauf)Anleitung Monkey Business Quilt Komplett (Deutsch/Metrisch)

Once again, thank you to everyone who stopped by last week to make the Virtual Cookie Exchange Blog Hop special. And also once again I have to apologize for not replying to every comment, I just can’t find the time, and my health issues are leaving me very tired these days, and I have to prioritize. But I still want you to know that I read and appreciate every single one of them.

I drew the winners of the pattern giveaway yesterday and emailed the digital copies to them right away. If you are a winner and didn’t receive an email, please check your spam folder. If you still can’t find the pattern, please let me know. Congratulations to

If you didn’t win but would still like a copy of the pattern, it is now available for purchase in the store section. A German/metric version is also available.

Click to purchase Deck The Halls Mug Rugs pattern (English/Imperial)

(Kauf)Anleitung Deck The Halls Mug Rugs (Deutsch/Metrisch)

And speaking of prioritizing… I did make good use of my time, and next year’s BOM is ready to start on January 1, 2022. I will be officially announcing it on Friday, so stay tuned.

Isn’t this one of the cutest quilts ever? Brenda isn’t just a fantastic quilter, she also has a talent for finding the most charming patterns. This one is an Amy Bradley design, and there is so much going on! The birds and butterflies, the flowers and gardening tools, those adorable polka dot gumboots! I think you can tell how thrilled I was when I got to custom quilt this beauty. This is one of my favourite quilts ever. Be sure to click on the gallery pictures below for a better view.

Susan made this blueberry themed quilt and asked if I could custom quilt it for her. This quilt is one of those rare ones where I think that custom quilting doesn’t make much sense. The fabrics and blocks are quite busy and the quilting gets lost, the irregular shapes in the blocks don’t really ask for specific custom patterns, and on top of it all this was a king size quilt, so custom quilting would be quite expensive without much of it showing in the end. We discussed a few ideas and then decided on a semi custom option with a pantograph in the block area but different designs for the two borders. I used “Wedding Vine” for the centre but couldn’t find a pattern that I liked for the outer border and finally designed my own blueberry vine to use on Susan’s quilt. We were both quite happy with the way it turned out.

This cute little quilt was made by Terri for her grandbaby. Her daughter selected the fabrics and chose the ruffles that are incorporated in every block. These ruffles made it impossible to do an allover pantograph pattern, the foot of the machine would get caught and possibly flip them over and stitch them down. So we decided that I would just free-motion around the ruffles, and I filled the block section with loops and daisies and added a separate daisy design to the border where the almost solid yellow border fabric makes the quilting much more visible.