I wanted to make something unique for my husband. I'd wanted to try paper quilling since I saw that quilled paper flower on my great aunt's wall when I was little (no one seems to know what happened to it - darn!)

My husband had been commenting that his office wall was bare. He's very into Linux, and this is Tux, the Linux mascot.

The Tux design belongs to Larry Ewing, lewing@isc.tamu.edu, who drew it using The GIMP. I simply quilled it so my husband could enjoy it on his wall. Here's how:

I found colored paper to match the colors in Tux, and cut it into very narrow strips.

In retrospect, acid free, non-fade, archival quality paper would have been a better choice than some of the paper I ended up with. Look at how faded parts of the quilling project are in the larger photo above, taken about 7 years after I made it, as compared to the photo of Tux's face, that I took when I made it. If you're going to put hours into quilling a project, research your materials.

I printed Tux a size that would fit the frame I bought. Next I pinned the paper to a thin sheet of foam I found at a craft store; it was an ideal flat pincushion for quilling. Then I rolled, glued, and folded a LOT of little quilled shapes to fill in Larry's pattern, carefully put a few dots of glue on each one with a large sewing needle, and pinned them next to each other so the glue could dry. It's a paper mosaic.

I never bothered to count how many quilled pieces went into the whole thing, but this close-up of one foot gives you an idea of how time consuming paper quilling can be.

If you have a project in mind, plan ahead so you can bring your cut paper, a pin or toothpick,  and a tiny glue bottle with you if you're going to be in any sort of waiting room. I made shapes while a passenger in the car too, but don't suggest using anything too sharp to apply glue in a moving vehicle.

See the long sheets of paper sticking out the top of the paper quilling project? I used unrolled strips of paper to define the edges and provide a more solid structure to glue all the little bits to, and to help give it support when I unpinned it and put it in the frame.  I had to glue it very carefully so the glue didn't attach it to the pattern behind it.

Visit my pages on quilling paper snowflakes for more detailed instructions on quilling the little shapes.