Fully embracing Mini Quilts

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

If you are not on Instagram you probably are not aware of the flurry of mini quilt swaps that have been happening over the last year or so. Hundreds and hundreds of mini quilts have been made a swapped all over the world and people’s homes now have walls adorned in beautiful little quilts. After resisting for nearly a year, in February I finally signed up for my first mini quilt swap – the Cotton and Steel mini quilt swap.

I shared my first quilt for this swap a couple of months ago, including the paper piecing pattern I used for this quilt on my original post…….

I liked it but I was not exactly what I wanted. So I went back to the drawing board and came up with this beauty…

I loved making this 15 inch square sampler and shrinking all these quilt blocks down to 3 inches was fun. Nearly all these blocks were paper pieced as I find it is the easiest way for me to get accuracy at this small size.

I really loved putting this quilt together…and even found some prints I could fussy cut at this small size!

So with my Cotton and Steel mini done I felt the need to sign up for another mini swap… this time the Lizzy House mini quilt swap. Now Lizzy House is my favorite designer… I love her prints. As so many of my quilts end up going to kids charities Lizzy Houses fun, modern novelty prints were an instant hit with me.

So what do you do when you have a huge collection of fabulous Lizzy House prints… you make hexagons of course…

So this is my Lizzy House mini work in progress. The day I signed up for the swap I started making hexagons and once I had them all I had a blast arranging and re-arranging them until I had a layout I was happy with.

This quilt has been so much fun to make…though a little tough on my hands as there has been a lot of hand sewing…

I started making this mini before I had my partner details (yes I was that excited!). After you sign up you get assigned a partner, you get sent a list of likes and dislikes and you can stalk them on Instagram so you can make something appropriate for them. So as much as I love these hexagons, I was not sure it was totally up my partners alley… so I made another mini…

..which is much more her style. This quilt is uses four different New York beauty patterns… and I love the unity of the similar shapes of the New York Beauty block combined with the disconnect of the different patterns pieces.

I am sure my partner will love which ever mini I end up sending. I have a couple more weeks before the quilts have to be sent and there is a chance I will change my mind again and make something else. This is the joy of mini quilts…they are so quick and easy to make.

So I can now say I am a mini quilt addict, though I have controlled myself this month and not signed up for any more swaps…yet.

15May2015

A modern baby quilt…

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

This week I finished the binding on my Paper Piecing Monday baby quilt. I am so thrilled with how this quilt turned out…and how easy it was to make.

As you can see the quilt used just four of my paper piecing Snowball patterns, and they really are the stars of the show. My favorite block is definitely this one…

But you can find the free paper piecing pattern for all the blocks under the “Free Paper Piecing Patterns” tab if you want to make your own version.

To build out the quilt I cut a bunch of 6 1/2 square blocks from my black and white stash. The blocks were just the perfect size so I could play with layout and see how I wanted the quilt to flow.

I originally started with the pink blocks running down the side of the quilt, but after some procrastination went for the layout I have now – one row below the paper pieced blocks and 5 above.

I had some serious fun fussy cutting… this block in particular seemed so appropriate for a baby quilt…

The quilt could easily have been made longer by adding another row or two of black and white blocks but I liked the square format.

For the quilting I ran straight lines down the quilt and then sewed intersecting vertical lines thru the paper pieced squares.

For the back I used some fun pink number fabric and some black and white dots. Nothing too fancy. The binding was of course scrappy pink solids!

This quilt is destined for an exciting life when my friends baby is born. They are an amazing couple that lead a slightly unconventional life. A traditional baby quilt was not going to do…

Quilt Details:

Technique: Paper piecing and simple patchwork.
Block size: 12 inches
Quilt Size: 48 x 48 inches

1May2015

An interesting source of fabric

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

At Christmas my darling husband gave me a set of Munki Munki flannel pj’s. Pajama giving at Christmas seems to be a very American tradition..but I have fully embraced it. When I opened my Christmas package only one thing came to mind….this is going to make a wonderful quilt.

For those of you that are not familiar with the Munki Munki brand, their top designer was/is Heather Ross and collecting the pajama prints and using them for quilts is very popular amongst modern quilters. This is of course what I tried to explain to the husband when he found me cutting up my pajama top.

Seriously how could I resist these darling gnomes…

So a flurry of fussy cutting ensued and my favorite “go to” block pattern, the wonky star, was employed….

What was interesting about making the top in particular for me was that I used all flannel. I had previously back several quilts in flannel…I love the soft finish particularly for baby quilts… but I had never pieced in it.

For this top I used some flannel scraps a friend had given me and bought some more from my local quilt store… and I tried to use as much of the source pajama fabric as I could…including the sleeve and leg cuffs which were bright green.

Most of the flannel I used had a wrong and right side and it was at times tricky to tell which was which…. except for the Cloud 9 flannel which was beautifully thick and lush and was reversible.

The end result was this darling little baby quilt… and I love how soft and cuddly it is.

10Apr2015

Cross Stitch Sparkle quilt

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

This week I managed to finish up another quilt… my Cross Stitch Sparkle quilt finally got quilted and bound….it only took 30 weeks and a friggin ton of half square triangles!

This quilt started last year when I agreed to test a quilt pattern for Sara at Knotty Gnome. I love to challenge myself and I had never done anything with half square triangles before so I jumped in feet first. Each block is 18 inches square and I thought I could make a little baby quilt. My original top finish was four blocks by four blocks.

But…in a moment of crazy a month or so ago… I thought I would make the quilt bigger and added an additional 5 blocks! I had just cut a whole pile of 4 inch solid squares so I thought why not use some of them.

Actually I love this size quilt…I think you really get a great sense of the pattern with the extra blocks added.

I used so many different warm and cool solids in this quilt. I know I have tons of Kona and Michael Miller Cotton Couture as well as Moda and a sprinkling of American Made in there. Basically any appropriate solids I had in my scrap bin went into this thing.

I quilted the top using straight lines on my home machine. For some reason I did not want to quilt it too densely and straight lines echoing the grey center square seemed to be the thing to do.

For the backing I used part of an IKEA duvet cover I had in my stash… it was the perfect back for this crazy colourful quilt.

Finally I hand bound the quilt using scraps of different greys. The grey was the perfect way to frame the quilt and contain the colour explosion.

Quilt Details

Pattern: X stitch Sparkle by Knotty Gnome
Fabric: Various solids
Quilt Size: 55 inch x 55 inches

3Apr2015

Back on track….

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

So I am not sure if any of you noticed…but I have been very slack in my posting lately. I have managed to keep my Paper Piecing Monday posts happening but everything else has just fallen by the wayside.

Bad bad me. Last week I was teaching all week and found that my creativity was completely absent. I have been a little out of kilter for a couple of months now and I am slowly getting my mojo back….and here is the proof.

Yesterday I had a blast using the new Bernina long arm machine at my LQS (local quilt store), Modern Domestic. Up until yesterday I had never done a whole quilt by myself, and I was so excited by how much fun I had. I did an all over squares and boxes pattern which seem to come very naturally to me (that means I did not quilt myself into a corner once!).

The quilt was one of my unfinished Do Good Stitches quilts… and I love the scrappy feel to it all. If you are interested in the pattern we used, you can find the link on my original post here…

I did a simple solid back and a wide navy binding to finish it all off. In a couple of weeks I am going to go back and give it all another go with one of my other unfinished Do Good quilt tops. I may branch out and try something loopy!

I have a long way to go before I master this long arm free motion thingy but I am pleased with the results of my first step. I must admit I am now hankering for some straight stitch quilting on my home machine, so I may baste up some more quilts this weekend. I had forgotten how satisfying it is to actually finish something up.