Monkey Business

I have a co-worker who decorates her “cube”. In the past, that has meant she puts up fabric of a pleasing color on top of the hideous cubical wall board and pinned up photos of tropical locations (which we changed out to photos of the desert when she was on vacation. Yeah, we’re great co-workers). My husband and I work closely with her, and in 2008 when we first starting working with her, we noted that she had a humidifier in her cubicle. Not too surprising given that we work in the Mojave desert – we all benefited from her humidifier. But the most important fact you should know about the humidifier is that it was a frog.

Frog Humidifier

Well, the first Christmas we worked out here rolled around and we were shopping at Bed, Bath, and Beyond for one reason or another. There was a bag of plastic frogs at the checkout, and we impulse purchased them. Then over the course of a month or so, we would leave a frog on her desk in the morning once a week or so. We finally confessed to the “frogging” and gave her the full set of dozen frogs.

Plastic Frogs

She adopted the frogs and named them (after Neptune’s moons) and over the years since then, the frogs have multiplied (*gasp*) as others have donated frogs and frog pictures… and even occasional frog-nappings occurred, but they would always return decorated to match the name they were given (Triton has a great tail and triton now, for instance).

Well, it turns out that she really doesn’t love frogs as much as she loves monkeys. Or maybe I just made that up, too. Regardless, I found some monkey fabric and I just *had* to try and change out the theme for her. Besides, we’ve moved offices many times over the years and I find the temperature settings in our latest environment to be too cold. A lap quilt would be perfect, right?

Monkey Business – Pieced Top

For the quilt top, I used a pattern by Elizabeth Hartman, New Wave (at the time it was a free download, looks like things have changed). I met Elizabeth back in February at QuiltCon when she taught a class on how to do free motion quilting on your home machine. Yeah, I think she’s awesome and have a bit of a fan girl crush.

Monkey Business – Quilting Detail

I got all the fabric cut the day I purchased the fabric. I quickly sewed together the first row… and got distracted by other things. Like buying a new house, moving, selling a house, and making Falling for Fall. Life happens, right?

Monkey Business – Quilt Top

Well, this past weekend I finished Falling for Fall and we got our first snow of the year. Since we got snowed/iced in for several days straight, I had time to finish this quilt! I’m getting a lot more bold with my free motion quilting. It’s definitely not perfect, but I’m having fun and trying out a lot of new patterns. I had never really tried doing this swirl pattern before… I just started quilting. For this perfectionist, that is crazy! 🙂

Monkey Business – Quilt Back

I don’t know that this can really do much to change the frog motif, but I sure tried.