Playdate: A Hanukkah Block

As much as we all love getting presents, giving them is even more of a blast o’ fun. And that includes giving them to you, Q-Bies. Today marks the first of four Playdates in December where we’ll share a funky or non-traditional holiday block pattern. The author of our quilty madness is GenQ Cabana Boy Scott Hansen, also of Blue Nickel Studios fame. (As if you couldn’t recognize his signature design vibe!)

Today’s block celebrates Hannukah, the Jewish Festival of Light honoring the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem in the 2^nd century BCE at the time of the Maccabean Revolt. The actual date of this eight-day candle-fest varies according to the Hebrew calendar. This year, it all starts on Dec. 20. You should have plenty of time to knock out a few of these babies. (Yeah, right, you’re saying. We get it. If your sewing room looks like our sewing room, well, we figured you needed a head start. We tried.)

Back to the block…although you might be expecting to see something in blue and white—the colors of the Israeli flag—our Scott was chatting with his sew pal Bari Ackerman of Bari J, and she said that, as she understands it, the ol’ blue-and-white scheme is largely an Americanized thing. It’s really all about the light.

“So I figured the colors of the light are actually all colors and I decided to emphasize the ‘lighting the night’ theme,” Scott says.

We love the chunky flames against the twinkly night sky, and the rainbow candles, and hope you do, too!

You’ve just got to share your versions with us, and to make that happen, we have re-named our Turkey Block Flickr group Holiday Blocks so it can accommodate all the GenQ holiday blocks we’ve done, past, present and future. Go here to post your photo or to see what everyone is making. And click here to download a PDF of the instructions below.

Don’t miss the rest of our December Holiday Block Playdates:

Dec. 9—Solstice block

Dec. 16—Christmas Block

Dec. 23—Kwanzaa Block