Paper Piecing Monday the crazy edition…

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

Summer has well and truly arrived in Portland and I have been making the most of the sunshine… and not posting as much as I usually do. Sorry about that.

This of course does not mean I have not been quilting… I have still been sewing away, just a little more sporadically than usual. For the last week or so the only thing that has been up on my design wall has been my Starry Night quilt.

As you can see the jigsaw is slowly coming together. I have finished with the star blocks and I am now just making sky. Random weird bits of sky.

This week I went through my EQ7 quilting program and found a pile of paper pieced patterns and printed them out (my sky pieces are currently all 6 inch square or 3 x 6 inches). With EQ I have been able to find a pattern I think is interesting and print it out at both sizes.

Now as stand alone blocks they look a little weird but once you add them to the quilt they just blend into the background in weird and wonderful ways….

No matter how hard I tried to hide it you have probably realised by now that I did not have a grand plan when I started making these blocks, and that I am really making it up as I go along. The blocks are not being placed in any sort of grid and I am just going with the flow, piecing bits and pieces together and seeing what works.

It is a crazy way to work…but really fun. If you are interested in exploring the individual star blocks I have used, you can find links to them under the “Paper Piecing Monday” tab and/or under the “Free Paper Piecing Patterns” tab.

28Jul2014

Mixed Medium paper piecing Monday

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

Today’s paper piecing pattern is a little bit different from my usual fair, as it is a lovely mix of traditional piecing and paper piecing, not that you can tell from the results….

The pattern I used is Lee at Freshly Pieced’s Arkansas Traveler block. Lee’s instructions are easy to follow and I loved making a block that had a little bit of traditional piecing

as well as some good old-fashioned paper piecing….

This is the block I am setting for August for my Do Good Stitches group. I can not wait to see how everyone in the Hope Circle interprets this block….

7Jul2014

Okay I may have a star addiction…

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

Another Paper Piecing Monday and it is another star. I may need an intervention…but not quite yet.

This block, like last weeks, is using the #opgivewarmth June colour palette that Sarah at www.nohatsinhouse.com set. It is also another great pattern from Don’t Call me Betsy’s Lucky Star BOM (this is from August 2013).

It is pretty easy with just 48 pieces, none of which are too tricky or small.

I am now eagerly awaiting Sarah’s July colour palette, but in the meantime I have paper to rip off these….

30Jun2014

I am blaming the cat….

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

In the short time that the cat has been in our house she has become the scapegoat for a number of offenses…. she has eaten the last of the ice cream, left the light on, very rudely abandoned washing in the dryer and today she is the reason that Paper Piecing Monday is running late….

Despite the cats best efforts, I have finally managed to get a block done…

This lovely star uses the June colour palette for No Hats in the House charity #opgivewarmth. I love the challenge each month of using a different set of colours that I would not usually work worth. I bravely selected a few of the colours in this months palette that were not pink and found Kona Solids to match…

The paper piecing pattern is another one from the Lucky Star BOM patterns from Elizabeth at Don’t Call Me Betsy. This block is the December 2013 Star and I love the square feel to it.

Now the cat and I are going back to watching the World Cup. She is finally over the disappointment of Australia going out and is rallying around the US team.

27Jun2014

Look what I have finally got done…

Posted in Finished Quilts, Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

… yes I finally got my red and aqua stars into a presentable form… a finished quilt top….I can hear the gasps of surprise from here…

These stars were the product of my first Paper Piecing Monday adventures. I loved putting them together each week, challenging myself to make some complex and amazing stars.

Some of the stars were free patterns from Quilting on the Square (you can find the links to the specific patterns under my Free Paper Piecing Patterns tabs) and others were from Carol Doak’s book 50 Fabulous Paper Pieced Stars.

So in the end I had 20 amazing 12 inch paper pieced stars and no real plan what to do with them. After an online survey last year, it was decided that navy sashing did the best job of showing off each and every star to its best, so a plan was hatched. Fast forward a few months (possibly more) and after auditioning a few navy fabrics and ended up using Robert Kaufman’s Quilters Linen in navy. It was perfect the job.

So now all that is left is to remove the paper… which will be quite a task as some of these suckers are really complex…

Then it is off to a long armer for quilting. At no point did I contemplate ruining this gorgeous quilt top with my quilting. It deserves the best…plus the finished quilt is going to my Mum so I want it to be amazing.