No More Monkeys Quilt (front)

Click here to see August 4, 2013 post, Monkeying A Round, for the source info on the central block.

Last year about this time I had finished the Mariner's Compass paper pieced center block, but had not a clue what would come next. As I considered various things to try, I decided I wanted to paper piece the design below based on a hexagon, so I cut monkeys to fit in the center and tried my luck. As it turned out, however, I never quite found how to order my piecing and had to finish the final seam of each round as best I could. I think there is a method that would work, but I have not quite mastered it. To hide my less than perfect final seams, I used a decorative stitch over each seam and ended up with the four corner blocks seen in the completed quilt above.

So, I had a center block, and four corner blocks, but nothing more. This seemed like a good time to try out a five minute block I had seen on YouTube. First, though, I wanted to know if I could fussy cut some monkeys to fit into the triangle of the 5 minute block. First run on some scraps proved it was possible, and so it was onward! 

Practice Five Minute Block with monkey on the flap

These were not actually quilt as you go,
picture of block was isolated from finished quilt and photo-edited
to look like a stack of blocks. It's hard to remember to snap pictures in the heat of
stitching!

Stacks, now, of five minute monkey blocks awaited a plan for where and how they would be oriented into the still evolving project.

My last quilting class before summer break had instructor Sandy teaching us how to do mitered corners for border pieces. Some of the samples she had brought to class used striped fabric, which really looked pretty nifty with the mitered approach. I had some remnant bin fabric in my stash already being considered for this quilt, and because it looked like bamboo, it also had a stripe effect. The plan was coming together!

As I finished the mitered inner border and added the outlying blocks, I heard an interview of a woman who was working with very young children and emphasizing how they love to learn shapes. She said she therefore used simple shapes in her baby quilts for the baby to continue to enjoy the quilt into the toddler stage.
Bingo! There was the plan both for jazzing up the plain bamboo plane, and for the free motion quilting that would be used thereon.

I machine stitched over the edges of the applique, then echo-stitched out from the edges with brown top thread and white bobbin, for the shapes to carry over to the back of the quilt in what I hoped would be an appropriate color. Quilted free motion triangles, squares, circles and rectangles in the four different shape sections of the border

So (sew?), after a year of monkeying around, a quilt finally did emerge. See below the top of my "No More Monkeys" quilt.

My next post will show the back of this quilt.