A quilted container – WIP Wednesday

Posted in Finished Quilts, Other fun stuff, WIP Wednesday by wombatquilts

In my sewing career I have made hundreds of quilts and one fancy dress costume. Once or twice I have hemmed or mended a few clothing items on the sewing machine but that is absolutely it, until this week.

Rewind a little bit to last month’s Portland Modern Quilting Guild meeting where a new swap was proposed. I had never participated in a swap before, they scare me a little – you have to do something on deadline to please someone else. Too much pressure for me. Last month though, thru a combination of pain medication and peer pressure I said yes to making a quilted container.

Fast forward to this week. I need the container for Thursday’s meeting and I had not even started. I had spent weeks procrastinating and convincing myself I could not do this. With time running out I bite the proverbial bullet and started. The Guild website had helpfully linked to a number of free tutorials, so I picked one – 1/4″ Mark.com’s quilted bucket and went to work.

Step one.. I selected some unused blocks to use in the body of the bucket. These paper pieced stars set the colour scheme for the finished piece

Step two… I made the bottom of the bucket (this step also involved spray basting my fingers together)

Step three… I did some maths (the hardest part of the whole darn process), deconstructed the blocks and made the body of the bucket.

Step four, five and possibly six… quilted the bucket body, then pinned the bottom piece to the body piece.

Which resulted in this…

Step seven… turned the outside piece inside out and attached handles

Steps eight to twelve… selected lining fabric, cut bottom and side bits, sewed them together, turned them inside out and sewed them to the quilted outer piece. By this stage I was loosing the will to live, but bravely carried on.

Step two hundred and six five… nearly finished… I pulled the quilted part through a small 2 inch whole left in the lining part to reveal this…

My finished bucket. The sides of the bucket are 12 inches and the base is 8 3/4 inches. I think if I was to make it again I would make the sides a little smaller but other than that I am pleased with the finished product. So pleased I took lots and lots of photos…

finished bucket 5

Really lots and lots…

From lots of different angles….

Just to document the achievement of having made a quilty thing that was not a quilt…

15Jul2013

Paper Piecing Monday presents Garfunkel

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday, Quilt patterns by wombatquilts

Another Monday, another paper pieced block. Yipee. Today’s block is a little more complex than my last few, but is sooooo fabulous. May I present Garfunkel…

When Julie at 627Handworks.com posted this block a couple of weeks ago I fell in love. It took me a week or so to work out how I wanted to approach the block and what colours I wanted to use. I ended up choosing red/pink combinations, but wanted to use so many more colours. For the first time I was really really frustrated by this sampler quilt’s limited palette. The FREE paper piecing pattern can be found here.

66 fabulous pieces to make this hexagon wonder. I have already started planning how I am going to use this pattern again – it is so effective and I am a little hexagon obsessed at the moment!

Have a great Monday.

11Jul2013

Let’s Get Acquainted Blog Hop

Posted in Other fun stuff by wombatquilts

I am really pleased to be part of Plum & June’s “Let’s Get Acquainted Blog Hop” and I can not believe it is my turn to post already. I have had such a great time checking out everyone’s post each week and finding new inspiration and new friends.

How did you get into quilting?

I started quilting after watching “How to Make An American Quilt” on video. I was recovering from a car accident and quilting was the perfect way to keep me out of trouble. I did not have anyone to teach me so I read some books and made lots and lots of mistakes. This is the first quilt top I every finished – I still have not quilted it, and I am not sure I ever will…

My first ever quilt top… circa 1997

My quilting skills have grown over the years, particularly after I moved to the States in 2006. I found wonderful wise older quilters at Project Linus who taught me how to bind my quilts properly, how to sew my bits of batting together (nothing goes to waste), and how to make a whole pile of interesting traditional blocks. I also found the Portland Modern Quilting Guild who taught me how to English paper piece, how to make creative quilt backs and most importantly that there is no right or wrong in quilting.

What do you love about quilting?

My favorite part of the process is design phase. I love to play with colour and pattern.

My colour and fabric choices are linked to the second thing I love about quilting, which is giving the quilts away. When I started quilting all those years ago my sister was a oncology nurse at the local children’s hospital. She was doing so much good and I felt like I wanted to contribute as well, the only problem was I hate hospitals and faint at the sight of blood. My solution was to make quilts for her chemo kids. Bright, fun, loud, interesting quilts. I have over the years made hundreds of quilts for children in hospitals in Australia, England and now Portland. 90% of my creations are given away to kids/people I do not know but who I hope get some comfort out of them.

I also love to paper piece. In the beginning of my quilting adventure I found paper piecing was the easiest way for me to get accurate blocks. I am not the most precise person, and paper piecing allows me to achieve blocks and quilts that would be otherwise out of my range.

Paper Piecing Monday blocks

Why did you start a blog?

There were two reason I started this blog:

1. To force myself to take photos and document the quilts I was making and giving away.

2. To force myself to try new things.

So far the blog has succeeded in both of these areas but has also given me the added bonus of linking into an amazing world-wide community of quilters who support me, encourage me and keep me honest.

As for my blogs name… I am not sure why I choose Wombat Quilts but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Just in case you have not seen one, this what a wombat looks like…

What are you working on now?

I must admit I have way too many projects in progress. My currently priorities are:

My Paper Piecing Monday Brights quilt
My Star Crossed quilt
My Blush log cabin quilt
My hexagon floral quilt

A little bit about me…

1. I have dual citizenship – I was born in England to Australian parents…. but consider myself Australian.

2. Two years ago I married an amazing American man, much to the surprise of my family who had given up on me ever marrying.

3. For 15+ years I developed and produced animated feature films in the UK and USA.

4. I have lived in four different countries in my life – Australia, Israel, England and the USA.

5. I hate being photographed (you may have worked this out from the fact that there is no photo of me on this site!)

Now that I have written one of my longest posts EVER…. go check out these other amazing bloggers who are part of this weeks hop.

Karen @ Karen, {Novice} Quilter

Anne @ PlayCrafts

Rachel @ Let’s Begin Sewing…

Jan @ Sew And Sow Farm

Anna @ Quilting Along The Grain

Sarah @ {no} hats in the house
Christen @ Love by Hand
Julie @ 627handworks

8Jul2013

Paper Piecing Monday presents Morrison

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday, Quilt patterns, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

I can not believe I am already at block 6 of my bright sampler quilt. This week’s block is called the Morrison…

The pattern is once again from Julie’s Block Rock’n collection. You can find the free paper piecing pattern here, along with different layouts for the block. In Julie’s test block she does more with the center of the block which I really like, and which makes for a quite different pattern.

The Morrison is not to complex a pattern and uses only 40 pieces of fabric… perfect for the scrappy approach.

As I have made it to 6 blocks, I could finally lay out the blocks and see how the quilt is coming together.

I am pleased with what I have so far. I do love how the colour pops against the neutral grey background. Six down, quite a few more to go…. so see you back here next week for installment 7.

3Jul2013

Revisiting blush – WIP Wednesday

Posted in Scrap quilts, WIP Wednesday by wombatquilts

A month or so ago I pulled this stash of fabrics that I thought was lovely, soft and pretty (original post here).

The block I originally made with this fabric pull did not excite me as much as I would have liked. Fast forward a month, and after working on a collection of graphic, bright quilts, I wanted something different. This is where I ended up….

I am loving how this quilt is coming together. It is fabulously easy, fabulously scrappy and fabulously girly.

It is being made almost completely from my scrap bin, and I have only had to cut some of the longer strips so far. I have not been stressing at all about choosing the fabrics – I have full embraced just going with the first strip of fabric that I pull out of my pile. It is very liberating.

There is an “I Spy” element to these blocks which will make for a great baby/kids quilt. I want to finish this one in time for SwimBikeSew’s 100 Quilts for Kids drive which started this week.