Monkeys Go Round

The inspiration for the first Project Quilting Focus Through the Prism challenge was the monkey wrench block.  I chose to use the color blue.  The finished project was required to be 20" square and "read" the chosen color.

I woke up dreaming about monkey wrenches in a circle, so I started by making a 20" square out of paper then folded it into 16ths to create sections.  I didn't want the circle to extend all the way to the edge, so I picked a distance that looked good and drew a line parallel to the edge in one of the sections.  (It doesn't look straight here, but trust me it is.)  Then I added 2 more parallel lines, each 1 inch apart.  Why 1 inch?  Because it's a nice round number.  Then I divided the space along each line in thirds and used this grid to draft the rest of the Monkey Wrench block.

Now for the tricky part.  We moved last fall and I threw away my printer.  I didn't replace it.  Lapacek's Orchard is only 2 minutes away and my son and family including Kim of Persimon Dreams  (yes, the one who owns Project Quilting) live there, so if I need to print something, I go there.  But I didn't want to go there at 6 am.  So I stacked up 10 or so papers and put the pattern on top.  I sewed along all the lines with no thread in my sewing machine.  It worked like a charm.  After the first few stitches all the layers stayed neatly together.  I repeated with one more stack.  This gave me a few extra, but, hey, if you don't make extras, you're going to screw up at least one.  Before separating the layers of each stack, I cut them out around the outer edge and on each row to create 3 separate pieces for each monkey wrench.

From there it was just paper piecing and sewing the rows together.  Then I sewed them into a circle and added fabric made from pieces of scraps to form the background.  I added one regular monkey wrench in the center and quilted and bound it.

And I have 2 days to spare before challenge 2 comes out.  Wonder what I can make in 2 days?

Finished size is 20 inches square.

Created in Poynette, WI.