A low volume scrap vortex…

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

This week I finished up my scrap vortex quilt… I actually started this quilt a couple of weeks ago in a bid to use some of my low volume scraps and after I found the wonderful QAL at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Amanda Jean leads the Scrap Vortex Quilt Along and does a great job of taking you through, step by step, making these blocks.. and makes dealing with all your scraps easy and manageable.

You start by sewing similar size scraps together and then sew those bits together and before you know it you have a quilt block.

For my quilt I trimmed my blocks to 12 1/2 unfinished.

It was so much fun putting this together. I was surprised by how many fun novelty prints I had that were low volume.

When I was selecting scraps for this project I chose only fabrics that had a white/cream background with a print on top of that back ground. There are probably five or six scraps that were pastel (a soft light colour fabric with a little white in it) but I wanted to predominantly white/creams.

You can see an example of one of those prints in the photo above… there are three little blocks that are a soft background with a white print. It seems like such a little thing, but the fabric reads differently than those around it…it reads darker and more solid than the print would suggest.

So if you are doing a low volume quilt, audition your fabrics carefully and if you can, use the camera on your phone to take a photo of the fabric and turn it into a greyscale image to see how the fabric actually reads.

For the back of the quilt I used bigger scraps and my left over bits and pieces to make an extra large block…with more novelty goodness in it… including my favorite bit…

Yep I managed to squeek in a koala bear…

For the binding I used the left overs from last weeks quilt….solid Kona pastels.

This quilt is headed to Project Linus for some kid to love and treasure…

Quilt Details:

Pattern: Scrap Vortex by Crazy Mom Quilts
Fabric: Various low volume Scraps
Finished Size: 48 x 48 inches

17Jul2015

Round and Round….

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

It has been a busy, crazy couple of weeks for me…which can all be summed up by the fact that all the photos I have taken of my quilts and things I have been doing were on a SD card which got corrupted. I had photos of my quilt at Sisters Outdoor quilt show…photos of my works in progress and photos of the Kids quilt class I taught last week. All gone.

After lots of tears and maybe a tantrum or two I dusted myself off and decided to let it go… so instead of sharing my recent adventures I am going to share one of my most recent quilt finish…

This week I finally finished my Portland Modern Quilt Guild medallion quilt. Now to t be honest with you I did not do all the borders that I was meant too… partly because I wanted this quilt to be baby size and partly because I got bored with the pastel colour scheme!

If you are interested in the pattern and process you can check out my earlier post about the quilt…which includes links to the free patterns we used.

To finish off my quilt I decided to do my first lot of circular quilting… using the walking foot on my new Bernina 550. I thought that circular quilting would be perfect with this quilt so I started in the center of the quilt and worked my way out.

Now if I am honest with you the center quilting was a little tricky. I took the above photo so you could see just how wonky I was at the start… I did end up unpicking quite a few of my stitches as they were so off kilter and I went back into the center using free motioning quilting (no walking foot) to get the center right.

Once I got past the tricky center it was really fun to just keep going round and round and round and round…. it was easy to move my small baby quilt to get a nice rhythm going. I know there is going to be more circular quilting in my future… I love how the quilt looks and feels with this type of quilting…

To finish it all off I used a selection of Kona pastel solid scraps to make the binding and hand bound the quilt…. and I was done. As I was putting the last stitches on the binding the wonderful postman dropped off this for me…

I kid you not, I took delivery of this book just moments after finishing my Medallion and I am now inspired to make another one…. this time not in pastel and this time maybe a little more modern.

Quilt Details:

Pattern: PMQG Medallion QAL
Fabric: Pastel and low volume scraps
Finished Size: 40 x 40 inches

26Jun2015

A personal project done….

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

I recently finished up my Grey Card quilt for the Black to White quilt challenge…

I was so thrilled with how this quilt turned out, but I was aware that it was very personal to me and may not be everyone’s taste. I entered the quilt anyway in the BTW Challenge and this morning got the email that it was not chosen for the exhibit.

There were some amazing quilts made for this challenge…check out the hashtag #btwqks to see some of the other quilts made.

Instead of hanging the quilt in an exhibit it now has pride of place in our living/lounge room…

My quilt is where it should be… and I must admit I smile every time I look at it… it reminds me of what was and what now is.

19Jun2015

Rainbow Crazy

Posted in Finished Quilts, Other fun stuff, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

This week I finished up my Rainbow Improv quilt just in time to ship it to Sisters for their quilt show next month….there is nothing like an impending deadline to get you working hard!

I started this quilt a little while ago, making the blocks in between some complex paper piecing projects. It was so much fun to do something so free from rules and constraints. You can read more about the process on my original post…

I just used a rainbow of solid fabric scraps and played with colour. I must admit I did not know what the end product would look like, I just enjoyed the process of making the blocks.

Because this quilt was going to Sister’s I wanted to do something modern for the quilting, but I did not want to distract from the blocks too much. In the end I went with my beloved straight line stitches but used a rainbow selection of thread for the quilting.

Each row of blocks got their own colour, which was so much fun to do.

I just used my walking foot as my line guide…I did contemplate marking up the quilt top but this was so much easier and worked out perfectly… I got 16 lines of stitches per row and only went a little off course, one or two times.

For the back of the quilt I went with a patchwork of solid Kona greys (Ash, Charcoal and Medium Grey), which was perfect for highlighting the change in the thread colour. If you look closely you can see the rainbow effect of the quilting.

The final touch was some scrappy grey binding, a label and I was done.

I am so thrilled with how this quilt turned out. It is so different from what I usually do, but was just so much fun to make…

Quilt Details:

Blocks: 6 inch improv blocks
Fabric: Variety of solids – Kona, Michael Miller, American Made and Bella.
Finished size: 48 x 48 inches

29May2015

Quilters are amazing people…

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

This week I was reminded just how wonderfully generous quilters are… I was gathering quilts to take to Project Linus and it hit me just how many people help make these quilts happen. Here is a selection of this months donations, starting with my finished Gnome stars quilt….

I made this top a couple of weeks ago and finally got around to quilting it this week. Quilting the flannel top and flannel back was an interesting process…. the flannel did not move through the machine as smoothly as standard quilting cotton… it took a little persuading.

But it is so soft and cuddly and worth the extra effort. My big lesson with this quilt is do NOT bind in flannel. I thought I would do flannel all the way but the extra thickness of flannel makes binding in it bulky and unruly. Next time quilting cotton binding all the way!

The next quilt was made at one of the PMQG monthly Charity Sew Days. Once a month we take over the main sewing classroom at a local quilt store, Modern Domestic and sew and talk and have fun. In March we made this…

We took a stack of fabric kindly donated by Sam Hunter…Tina Given’s “Haven” line…added a couple of blenders and spent the day making disappearing nine patch blocks.

This quilt is destined to go to a local Foster kid who was graduating out of the system, so we wanted something a little grown up and a decent size.

One of our fabulous guild members, Betty took the scraps left over from making blocks and made the most amazing back for this quilt.

And one of our talented long arm quilters, Kazumi Peterson weaved her magic to put it all together…. with Cris Pera doing the final step of binding. It is truly a group effort.

Kazumi also donated this beautiful quilt to Project Linus this month….

Her reasoning for donating this beauty was that the fabric was part of a Guild challenge and so it seemed appropriate that it would be part of the Guild charity quilt donations.

I am sure a lot of you recognize the fabric….and I love what Kazumi did with it. (If you want to see what I did with it check out this post).

I had to throw in a close up of Kazumi’s quilting…I love it so much. She really does beautiful work and I am not at all jealous of her quilting talent (okay maybe just a little jealous!).

The final quilt I am going to share started as a donated UFO quilt top.

Elsa, our Guild president this year, donated the top she made out of charms she got in a swap…

…and once again one of our fabulous PMQG quilters, Gail Weiss weaved her magic, this time free motion style.

All these quilts are destined to go out into the world and wrap someone in love..and none of it could have been possible without Sam, Elsa, Betty, Wendy, Kazumi, Cris, Dawn, Penny, Juline, Elisa, Anne, Suzanne, Pam, Jo, MaryAnn, Michelle, Gail, Rachel, Angie, Kathryn, Joy, Nancy, Jolene, Lisa, Lupine, Meredith, Meredith’s mum and all the members of the PMQG who give of their time, talent and fabric stash. Thank you.