My 2022 twenty week long Monday Block Project is all done! In January I set myself the task of sewing a weekly quilt block that incorporated at least one Australian Aboriginal Print fabric. It turned out that Tula Pink’s Dragon’s Breath* and Unicorn Poop solids* coordinated beautifully with the Australian Aboriginal Print fabrics. Who would have expected that?? I also added some batiks and other fabrics from my stash.

I chose blocks that incorporated crosses (or plus signs if you prefer that nomenclature) and blocks that seemed to rotate or spin in some way. Many of the blocks came from the Electric Quilt 8 (EQ8) Block Library. I needed to put all the blocks into the Block Worktable of EQ8 to draw redraw them to be 12.5 inches square.

I really enjoyed both redrawing/resizing the blocks and sewing them each Monday for the first 20 weeks of 2022. I might have kept going, but I didn’t want this quilt to be huge.

The completed tops sat around all summer while I pondered how to quilt it. I finally settled on straight line quilting the blocks and doing free-motion quilting inside the blocks. I used one of my favorite free-motion quilting patterns—a loopy daisy. You’ll find them in many of my quilts. But it seemed particularly appropriate in this quilt because so many of the Aboriginal designs incorporate flowers and other plants.

There is some circular quilting in a few of the blocks, some arcs, and one block which has 2 segmented quarters of a sun with rays. Here are four of the block enlarged.

Here’s a closeup of the segmented sun. It’s hiding in the block’s design, but you should see it if you look hard!

Quarter sun with rays. (Up close, not the best free-motion quilting. Looks like I just wasn’t sewing at a consistent speed).

I am super please with everything about this Monday block project!

*These two Tula Pink solid collections are getting difficult to find so I didn’t add links. However, you can find her True Color Solids which will be similar.