Lost in the infinite Starry Night…

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

Well that at least is what it has felt like the last couple of weeks. My design wall has been home to just one thing… my Starry Night quilt. I was determined not to take it down until it was finished… and I didn’t…

Over the last weeks I have added more night sky bit by bit…

The white bits of the design board became smaller and smaller…. and this week I finally finished all the sky blocks and wrangled all the pieces together…

Starry Night quilt top is now finished….It was quite a task to get this paper stiffened behemoth through my little old domestic machine but I did it… with only a few minor injuries.

The most interesting view of this creation, I think is the back, with all the paper pieces still in tact. You can see just how much variety there is in the night sky. I had a blast playing with the EQ7 paper piecing library and I do not think this crazy would not have been possible without EQ.

I think if I had set out to do the sky this way in the beginning I am sure I would have found some way to talk myself out of it.

As it was I just did it bit by bit, not really fully understanding how insane I was being….

Once the paper is off I will post photos of the complete top… at the moment it is just to stiff and unruly to handle…. next week I promise a full quilt top reveal.

29Aug2014

Some little quilts for a good cause…

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

Last week Maryann, the PMQG President, and I dropped off a collection of darling little quilts for a new Neo-natal ICU unit that has just opened up locally.

We delivered nine quilts, and know that other PMQG members dropped off more during the week. We picked the quilts up at Modern Domestic, who kindly allowed us to use their store as a backdrop for the photos.

The quilts included a couple I had made…. including a disappearing nine patch quilt using some lovely Hoffman Batiks that Sam at Hunter Design Studios had given me.

A lovely little strip quilt I made using a Moda Scrap bag.

And a simple patchwork quilt using leftover Glitz fabric from Michael Miller. I was so excited to see how well this fabric washed up.

The fabulous Monica Solorio-Snow made two darling quilts using her Happy Mochi Yum Yum fabric.

Monica very kindly did up a free PDF pattern for this quilt which she shares on her website Happy Zombie.

There were so many different techniques used to make these little quilts… Wonky low volume crosses by Mary Ann…

Fussy cut bordered squares done by Susan Paris…

Charming nine patches by Michael Ann….

And simple patchwork.

Not all the quilts had labels attached so please let me know if your quilt appears in this collection, so I can credit your lovely work.

The need for these quilts will be ongoing, so I already have a couple more in the works. If you feel inspired to make a little (36 x 36) quilt, most hospital NICU’s take quilty donations, or you can also drop a quilt off with your local Project Linus Chapter or other blanket charity. It really is an easy way to make a difference.

So dust off those orphan blocks, pull out that novelty print you have that you do not know what to do with… go on make a quilt…you know you want to.

1Aug2014

Wonky Kites Quilt

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

A couple of weeks ago a group of PMQG members met for our monthly Charity Sew Day. These get togethers are always good fun and this one was no exception. For July I had chosen a wonky kite block for us to make… another easy scrap busters…

This quilt is so ridiculously simple. We started with a 5 inch square of our background solid, Kona Shadow and then sewed a green/blue scrap on opposite corners.

You then trim the block to 5 inches….

Then sew two block together, making sure the triangle pieces meet, but not worrying at all about matching the seams (this is the wonky way). Repeat process and then sew the two halves together to make the kite centered block…

What you end up with is a really fun, random block…

Sew them all together and you end up with a huge quilt top!

Our charity for this month has requested Twin size quilts, no mean feat at the best of times (and impossible for me to photograph properly).

This block was perfect for making sure we had a fun, modern quilt ready to go to a long armer, in a day.

It helped that we had a great team working to make blocks….

And of course the final check and block layout approval was provided by the cat!

25Jul2014

The PMQG Orphan sampler

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

At this week’s PMQG meeting we delivered a large stack of quilts to a local Charity, Camp Erin. It was so wonderful to see the beautiful quilts that people had created for this charity. Among those delivered were three quilts made at our Charity Sew Days and the Orphan block sampler I put together….

The blocks in this quilt are fabulously diverse and really kind of fun…

Some of the blocks I trimmed, some I added borders too and others I cut in half…

There are hexagons, scrappy trips, churn dashes, nine patches and modern improv blocks. We have it all…

For the backing I found a wonderfully bright and slightly obnoxious Kaffe Fassett orange floral print that was just perfect…

The beautiful quilting was done by PMQG member Kazumi Peterson. Kazumi added an overall floral motif which went perfectly with the back of the quilt and added such a pretty cohesiveness to the front of the quilt.

I then finished things off with bright orange binding. I knew that I had to highlight the orange of the quilt – the blocks and the backing. I had originally tried putting an orange border around the quilt, instead of the grey, but I found it fought with the blocks for attention. Orange binding was the perfect compromise.

My darling husband had originally called this an ugly quilt but I think he is very wrong. The finished product is fun and bright and pretty…but I am a little biased.