Blocks for a Charity Quilt and More Sock Monkey Love

Our NEMQG (New England Modern Quilt Guild) is striving to charity quilts on a frequent basis. Here are the blocks I was asked to do:

This is the first time in a while that I have stepped out of my "box" and made some quilt blocks out of fabrics from different collections/designers. I really love it. When I first discovered this world of modern quilting and fabrics, I initially thought that I had to make quilts consisting completely of one collection, but this thinking has left me with some disappointing results.

New topic: I bought a pair of red heel socks out on my trip to Denver and 2 weeks later, made this little guy for my son. Any suggestions for naming him? I am kind of leaning towards Jasper....


I made the pink/green/blue argyle version as a "practice" but found that the two different kinds of socks were quite different to work with. I can give everyone a few tips about making softies: break-up the stuffing/fiberfill into smaller chunks and this will lessen the bunching within the toy that creates the "muscular effect." Also, I ended up putting cardboard inserts into the other monkey's ears because they were really jagged, due to the stretchiness of the sock material. I opted not to do the cardboard inserts for this little guy because his ears are so big, I worried they would look like wings.

Is a blog post complete without a picture of my little one? He actually really likes this toy and has been sucking on the ear, leg, and arm. I have his quilt on the floor in the living room because he's too little to sleep with it but I couldn't wait to get some use out of it!