Scottish Penguin Glen

Scottish Penguin In A Kilt Quilt Pattern | Whims And Fancies

 

Purchase Scottish Penguin Glen Pattern

 

On Monday I sat down very decisively to work on something happy.  Meet the newest member of my penguin fold – a little Scottish penguin named Glen.  When I shared the initial sketch, Kris asked what a penguin keeps in his sporran.  As I was sewing, I thought of a little story.

 

Glen had always loved wearing his kilt, but the other little penguins made fun of him.  Instead of changing himself to fit in with the others, he spent his days roaming the hills and dales alone, having his own adventures.  Although he was happy to go about on his own,  he sometimes wished he had a friend with him.  During one of his excursions, he found a new hill.  As he walked up the hill slowly – he was a little penguin after all – it started getting colder and darker.  Rain clouds covered the sun and very soon, strong gusts of wind started blowing him all over the place. 

 

Scotland | Whims And Fancies

 

He hurried up the hillside and found an old broken ruin there.  The hill was in a remote area and the entrances to the ruin were all overgrown with brambles.  He took a little knife out of his sporran to clear a path so he could get in without spoiling his clothes.  As he was cutting the brambles, something pink plopped down along with a few Thistle flowers.  He loved Thistle.  When he bent down to pick up the flowers and put them in his little sporran, he found a small pink stone among them.  By this time, big raindrops had started pelting down on him.  He hurried into the ruin to sit inside a big stone fireplace.  There he sat, thumbing the stone and looking at the sky, waiting for the rain to let up a little.

 

Penguin Quilt Pattern | Whims And Fancies

 

Purchase Little Penguin Polaris Pattern

 

A flash of lightning, and he suddenly found himself elsewhere, facing two other penguins.  One was dressed in woolens and the other in Viking clothing.  They were as surprised to see him as he was them.  After a little awkward introduction, Glen learned their names were Polaris and Olaf.  He also found out that they had been lonely penguins too, before they met each other. Polaris loved his matching woolens, he had quite a few sets.

 

 

Purchase Viking Penguin Olaf Pattern

 

As for Olaf, not only did he love his Viking clothes, he also insisted on having horns on his helmet even though he was told Viking helmets didn’t have horns.  He thought the horns made him look very mighty and formidable.  They both welcomed Glen with open arms.

 

Scotland Thistle | Whims And Fancies

 

Polaris gave Glen a little snowflake that sparkled in the moonlight.  Olaf gave him a little fire-stone which glowed in the dark.  Glen remembered the thistles in his sporran and gave each of his new friends a thistle.  He showed them his pink stone too.  All three wondered if rain and thunder somehow activated the stone and if there were more penguins like them.   For now though, they were delighted to have found each other.  Sometimes you just have to look a little farther to find what you are looking for.

 

The photos were taken by me in Scotland.  I took the photo of the Thistles in the mountains standing outside, buffeted by wind gusts of 40 – 50 mph.  It was quite a difficult task, and I feel like I brought a little Scottish spirit home with me captured in that photo.

 

Scottish Penguin Glen Quilt Pattern | Whims And Fancies

 

Purchase Scottish Penguin Glen Pattern

 

Glen doesn’t always like to wear his tie or his belt buckle.  So I included additional sections in the pattern for easier piecing without the tie and the belt buckle.

 

Since I always get asked about pattern links, here are links to all three penguin quilt patterns –

Scottish Penguin GlenThe newest member!

Little Penguin Polaris

Viking Penguin Olaf

 

Penguin Quilt Patterns | Whims And Fancies

 

They are a happy bunch, aren’t they!  I love them!

Have a crafty week,
-Soma

 

I am linking up with the linky parties on my Events And Links page.  Please pay a visit to some of them, they are a lot of fun!

 

 

 

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Raindrops On Flowers

Thistle, Daffodil, Flax, Rose - Flowers Quilt Pattern

 

Purchase Stained Glass Flower Patterns

 

Old stained-glass window panes set in stone-grey abbey walls bordered with red tapestries were the inspiration for my Flowers Of The United Kingdom wall hanging.  That was the original name because the flowers are the Scottish Thistle, the Welsh Daffodil, the Irish Flax and the English Rose.  I started working on this wall hanging with the Scottish Thistle in February of 2013 and slowly worked my way through the other three blocks.  The flower quilt patterns took me some time to draw exactly the way I envisioned them.

 

 

Welsh Daffodil paper piecing quilt pattern

 

Purchase Welsh Daffodil Pattern

 

Welsh Daffodil was the hardest one for me to design but the easiest to stitch. I wanted a symmetrical design for these blocks and this little flower put up a good fight. This design went through a few iterations before I fell in love with this one.

 

 

Scottish Thistle Paper Piecing Quilt Pattern

 

Purchase Scottish Thistle Pattern

 

Having visited Scotland twice very extensively and having fallen in love with it, I really wanted to make a thistle quilt block. This wild flower instigated the idea of a wall hanging in my mind. Unlike the daffodil, I knew exactly how I wanted to draw this one. Because of the nature of the thistle flower having a lot of corners, this one is the most complex of the four designs.

 

 

flax_bag_front

 

 

Flax for Ireland was the next one I worked on.  I didn’t want a to make a shamrock for Ireland.  After asking a couple of friends and looking up reference material, I came up with Flax.  This flower was the easiest to draw.  You probably already saw this one where I used this block for the first tote bag I ever made.  I removed the yellow parts in between the petals from the original design since that was causing the block to have too many points to line up when stitching the two sections together.  I wasn’t ready to give up on the original design yet, so I used this extra block for the tote bag and went back to my drawing board.

 

 

Irish Flax paper piecing quilt pattern

 

Purchase Irish Flax Pattern

 

I ended up redesigning the block using Y-seam even though I didn’t know how to stitch Y-seam before I worked on this block. I looked up how to stitch Y-seam and trusted my ability to draw a pattern without ever having sewn using that technique before. Y-seam is really not as hard as I thought it would be and it worked out exactly as I envisioned. I couldn’t be happier with the result.

 

 

English Rose paper piecing quilt pattern

 

Purchase English Rose Pattern

 

Last but not least came the English Rose because I had absolutely no idea how I wanted to draw it. The daffodil was a little easier to draw because of its limited number of petals, whereas I had to work with the shape of the rose. I like what I have here, it was easy to sew and I love the little gingham fabric I used for this one. It was a lucky find!

 

 

Thistle, Daffodil, Flax, Rose - Flowers Quilt Patterns

 

Purchase Stained Glass Flower Patterns

 

As you can tell, they all share some design elements.  I also added some extra details on each side of the flowers, but they can easily be substituted with a single piece of fabric for simplicity.  Each central flower block is 6.5″ x 8.5″ with seam allowance and the overall block measures 10″ x 10″.  Some of you may remember my showing these finished blocks last year.  Then I got stuck at how to quilt this wall hanging and it sat unattended in the cupboard until very recently.

 

 

Daffodil Quilt Pattern

 

 

One day I was reading in the living room and it started raining outside.  As I saw the the raindrops falling and splashing, I had my quilting motif.  I drew a set of 0.5″-spaced concentric circles and cut them out with my small rotary cutter.  I used them as templates to draw out every single circle before I started quilting them.

 

 

Circle Quilting

 

 

Once I finished quilting the wall hanging, the name Raindrops On Flowers sounded so much better.

 

 

Thistle, Daffodil, Flax, Rose - Flowers Quilt Pattern

 

 

I took my time with every single part of this project until it felt right to me and I am so happy that I did.  I have never hung any picture over our bed because we live in California and I am afraid that it might fall and injure us during an earthquake.   After experiencing an M6 earthquake in August, I was very happy about my decision.  That very day of the earthquake I had finished painting our bedroom a shade of light buttery-yellow and a mossy green accent colour on the bed-wall.   Now I have the perfect wall hanging for that wall.

 

As my friend Susie said so aptly shortly after the earthquake, “I can’t help but think that this quilt that you are finishing, reminds me of nature and beauty… with earthquake shocks moving through them…”

 

Happy Sewing,
-Soma

 

 

 

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