Arkansas Traveller Quilt

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

This week I managed to get another quilt off my WIP list….

arkansas traveller quilt

This quilt is a Do Good Stitches quilt from a long time ago. I actually finished piecing the top in October 2014 and first posted the block pattern in July 2014… actually feeling very guilty about how long this one has been sitting unfinished…

quilt detail

The block is a paper pieced pattern by Lee at Freshly Pieced called Arkansas Traveller. In setting a paper pieced block for your Bee, you are usually helping your odds of getting block the right size,…. unless some of your fellow Bee members, who are new to paper piecing, print the pattern out a little too small…

sashed blocks

This usually happens when you either print the PDF of the pattern straight from the computer, without saving it to the desktop or if you print the pattern with “scale to fit” box ticked on in the Print dialogue box.

quilt detail 2

When I first got the Bee blocks in and realised some of them were a little small I thought I might have to remake them… but my darling husband suggested sashing and it worked a treat.

arkansas traveller quilt detail

I fully embraced the scrappy feel of this quilt by adding a wonderfully scrappy binding, that used 8 different coloured fabrics…. I ended up attaching the binding, by hand, with the same variegated yellow thread that I quilted with.

scrappy binding

So another old Work in Progress is done… I was feeling so virtuous about my finishes that I decided to start a new project but more about that next week.

29Jan2016

Finish Along 2016

Posted in Finished Quilts, Other fun stuff by wombatquilts

A week or so ago I signed up for the first quarter of the 2016 Finish Along. This is a online project that is run every 3 months… basically you sign up at the beginning of a quarter and say what you want to finish over the next couple of months. I am using the program to keep myself on track to finish up things before I start anything new.

If you are interested you can check out what people are doing there is an Instagram account – @finishalong and She Can Quilt is hosting the link up at http://www.shecanquilt.ca.

Anyway the goals I set myself for the next four months are…

Now I understand I may have over committed but I thought I might as well shot for the stars. But so far I have one of my Do Good Stitches quilts done…

This was such a fun quilt to finish up… I originally set this block for the Hope Circle of Do Good Stitches to do back in June last year. The block pattern is from Clover and Violet and you can find the directions here scrappy christmas star.

I was a little nervous about setting a Bee block that needed to be pretty accurately pieced to align, but it all worked out fabulously. I was able to coerce all the seams into alignment without too much effort…

One of the things I love about doing these scrappy blocks is seeing everyone’s fabric choices and extra love the wonderful selection of low volume novelty prints that were used…

There is so much happening in the quilt as far as print variation but the overall quilt is so quiet and gentle.

For the quilting I went of course with straight lines, which was perfect for this pattern. I used a cream Aurifil for the quilting (No 2309), which blended nicely between the teal, yellow and white/cream background.

For the backing I found the perfect Suzy Ultman for Robert Kaufman piece in my stash – and I had enough to do the whole back!

For the binding I used two different teal Kona Solids I had in my stash and of course hand bound it while watching the Australian Open Tennis. I am going to make the most of the last couple of matches to get another Do Good finish bound…..

So one finish down… at least 5 more to go….

22Jan2016

Rethinking Brown

Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

My slight disdain for the colour brown began when I was a kid in art class…when mixing paints it was all to easy to mix too many colours and end up with a dirty brown colour…. and it happened to me all to frequently.

You do not have the same problem when making quilts, but I was still resistant to using brown at all. In traditional quilting brown has long been considered a neutral colour, but Modern Quilters on the whole tend to be wary of it.

Strangely though I have quite a bit of brown in my stash…not as much as I have pink or navy blue, but more than I should have. I have also had a few brown scraps given to me over the years and at the end of last year my brown scraps hit critical mass… there was only one thing to do…

Yep I made a scrappy improv quilt using my brown scraps and a touch of orange… and it was an interesting experience.

I forgot how many fabulous fabrics Heather Ross has done in brown… I used her seahorses, butterflies, octopus and plants in this quilt.

On of my other favorite designers, Lizzy House, also has done some lovely browns… with mice and cats and of course my all time fav – Pearl Bracelets.

And in between all that novelty goodness is a eclectic collection of prints including a handful of batiks.

It was kind of fun to challenge myself to work mainly in brown… it made me rethink the colour. The result was I came up with a few more brown colour combinations I want to play with including…

A red based brown with teal….

Brown, yellow and pink…

And the classic brown and baby blue (not dissimilar to one of this years Pantone colours).

So you have been warned that there may be more brown appearing in this feed. So is there a colour you have in your stash that you avoid?

Quilt Details:

Quilt block: Modern Improv
Fabric: Various scraps
Quilt Size: 48 x 48 inches

8Jan2016

Everybody loves a wonky star…right….

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

My final finishes for 2015 and first finish of 2016 has been putting the binding on a couple of wonky star quilts. If you follow this blog you know how much I love a wonky star, and I found during my recent health issues that I could make wonky stars without too much effort or thought (I seem to have good muscle memory for this quilt block!)….

What made these quilts so easy for me to make was that I used some of my huge stash of 5 inch squares and lots of scraps. For this first quilt I grabbed a pile of blue squares and my bag of white/cream scraps and got to work.

What you can not see too well in the photos is that each center of the star is made up of improv scraps. This is my favorite bit of the process… sewing all the little scraps together to make my own fabric.

For all my wonky star quilts I did simple straight line quilting, but with this quilt I used a variegated thread I found in my thread box. I kind of love how it turned out…

For my next two wonky star quilts I took some scraps of Hoffman batiks that I had been given and had some fun…

This is my favorite of the quilts… I love how the soft pink and blue play together….

Plus I got to play with novelty prints which makes me so happy. The background for the stars uses 4 different Batiks and with all these quilts the colour variation in the background adds a nice texture to the overall quilt I think.

I got to back my pink stars with some of my favorite fabric from Michael Miller. I love the mermaids so much…and this fabric was so perfect for the quilt it had to be used.

For the background of this quilt I used creams/beige batiks from a Hoffman layer cake or two. I do not use batiks much in my quilting but I love how they work as a support to the modern quilting fabrics. For this quilt I played with batting loft and used a wool batting.

The batting gives the quilt a lovely warmth and softness… it is nicely puffy. I can see why long arm quilters would choose to use a higher loft batting, as it really does make the quilting stand out.

So there are my last and first finishes. Very simple, very easy and kind of fun. Each quilt finishes at 41 inches square, a perfect size for our local Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.

4Dec2015

More finishes for 2015…

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

I am really really obsessed with getting some of my quilts finished this year… and I am running out of year. So the push is on… I have recently finished up a quilt top I made for the 100 Quilts for Kids drive, but my health hindered me finishing it on time.

This was a fun and easy quilt to make. I used some of the thousands of 3 inch squares I have cut over the last year or so from my scraps. The background fabric is a grey/blue hatch fabric by Timeless Treasures. I love how it plays against the solids.

Came together so easily using chain piecing. I just sat at the machine sewing a background fabric to a solid, one after another. I had an impressive string of fabric pieces by the end of the first stage.

I kept the quilting simple, just straight lines through the background fabric. For some reason I did not want to run stitches through the solid fabric… and I love the plaid feel this quilting added.

For the back of the quilt I found the perfect piece of Ikea fabric…

Somehow those bathing beauties just seemed to work. I have been hoarding this fabric for a little while and was waiting for the perfect quilt to use it with. To finish it all off I used a selection of Kona solid greys to bind the quilt.

I spent yesterday morning at Project Linus Portland processing quilts… including this quilt.

Quilt Details:

Pattern: Simple four patch using 3 inch squares
Fabric: Solid scraps and Hatch in Steel by Timeless Treasures
Size: 40″ x 50″