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…

31May2013

Finally a proper finish

Posted in Finished Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

Today I am happy to say I finally finished a quilt – quilted, bound and labeled. It has been two weeks since I finished a quilt and I was feeling a little antsy about it all. So without further ado, here she is…

If you are a regular to the site you will have seen this quilt in various stages of production, but she is now all finished!

I must admit I have struggled today to get her photographed properly. The lighting conditions have not been at all co-operative, but fourth time is a charm.

I did straight line stitching using a magenta thread. I really did not know what colour thread to go with – white did not seem right, navy was a little too dark, green too light. The thread choice is okay but it is not quite what I wanted. Too late now right!

I backed the quilt with some IKEA fabric that I thought went well. Bright and cheery.

The quilting is quite effective on the back of the quilt at least!

I bound in solid navy. It is my go to binding and just seems to bring everything together nicely.

I am linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for Friday finishes.

Have a great weekend!

17May2013

Oh what a week

Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

After last week’s spring clean I felt so refreshed and energized, and it is reflected in the fun I have had this week. The highlight of the week has to have been having Jacquie Gering of Tallgrass Prairie Studios talk at the Portland Modern Quilt Guild. I love the freedom of Jacquie’s quilts and am sooo inspired by seeing her quilts in person and hearing her talk. I can not wait to cut my poppy quilt up and try to make something modern and different from it. Stay tuned.

This week I also managed to finish a quilt. Surprising I know, but I felt I had to get something completed. So here it is…

This quilt started a little while ago with this modern Ohio star block (posted here)….

And it grew into this fun bright quilt. Once again with the block you can see the star pattern, but with the quilt you see so much more (mainly lots and lots of triangles!).

I struggled for a couple of weeks over the backing of this quilt. I pulled out and prepared a couple of printed fabric choices but nothing seemed to work just right for me. Then I woke up yesterday morning with the perfect solution. I grabbed some solids and little bit of quilters linen and made this backing piece.

I decided to quilt along several of the block seams to really highlight the triangles in the pattern. I used lime green thread so that you could really see the quilting on the back. I do not usually do this, but in the spirit of new things, I gave it a try.

It does mean that you can see a couple of my not so straight lines but I am embracing the imperfections.

I am entering this quilt in the Bloggers Quilt Festival in the two colour category. It is the first time I have entered a quilt and the quality of the quilts entered is amazing. Check out the site, in particular their quilters focus, for some amazing inspiration.

Now I am off to do some more quilting. I have a stack of quilts that unfortunately are not going to finish themselves… unless someone will lend me some quilting elves!

26Apr2013

A Trip around

Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

Like a lot of quilters out there, I have been seeing Trip Around quilts and blocks on-line for ages and ages. I had seen some amazing versions but I had never really thought about making one myself… then the Portland Modern Quilting Guild set it as one of their charity blocks. That is when the trouble started.

First I checked out the pattern instructions from Bonnie Hunter at Quiltsville. Looked easy enough. My initial intention was to make just on block for the charity quilt so I cut 6 strips of fabric and made this.

What was not included in the instructions was how addictive this process was. My one block very quickly and easily grew to be this.

Lots of black & whites mixed with loud obnoxious colours makes for a fun quilt.

I backed the quilt with some Ikea fabric, did some diagonal quilting and machine bound it. I had never bound anything with solid black before but I think it works well with this quilt.

I am digitally adding my Trip to the growing collection out there on the web and then sending the real thing off to Project Linus for some one to snuggle under.

And in the spirit of Trip Around… here is visual trip around my quilting space (also known as our Living Room) as it looks this morning.

That is… wip on the floor… fabric on the table waiting to be cut…. batting waiting to be used…. and my hexies work station on the couch/sofa arm. Yes I am a messy quilter.

12Apr2013

The joy of 5 inch squares.

Posted in Finished Quilts, Project Linus, Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

Last year I had a brief period of time when I had some back issues that meant that sitting was not a fun thing to do. I decided that, seeing I could not sit at a sewing machine, I would cut fabric. For weeks I cut 5 inch squares out of my scraps and stash. The end result was hundreds and hundreds of 5 inch squares. Now all I had to do was find ways to use them.

My first step was to make a pile of simple baby quilts for Project Linus which played with colour (please excuse the dodgy i-phone photos).

This year I have got a little more creative with the squares, while still keeping it simple. First I used the squares as the basis for my wonky star quilt which you can see here. I then used the left over bits and pieces of that quilt (plus some left over scrappy white squares) to make this.

The 5 inch squares were used for the center pieces of the block, the background of the quilt plus I cut a number of the squares diagonally and used these triangles to make the star points. Wonky star quilts really are so ridiculously easy.

The latest quilt I used my 5 inch squares on is my extra-large granny square quilt, which I have just finished.

With this quilt I just lay the blocks down diagonally to make the pattern, sewed the blocks together then trimmed the extra edges and it was ready to go. Again ridiculously easy.

With both these quilts I did a simple straight quilting, running down both sides of the “ditch”.

The backing for both these quilts is from Ikea. The granny squares got the most fabulous fun lips fabric as it’s back (yes the photo is upside down!)

And for the wonky stars I went with a simple black & white music note fabric.

What I love about Ikea fabrics is their width. You can easily piece larger kids quilts with one piece of fabric plus their prints are really fun. Both these quilts are now finally finished and ready for delivery this month to Project Linus.