A new paper piecing obsession…

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

Have you ever seen a quilt or a block or got an idea that you just could not let go? A week or so ago an idea took hold of me I could not shake it. I was cruising Pinterest, as you do, and saw some quilts with house blocks and fell instantly in love.

Now these quilts are not what usually excites me but for some strange reason I could not lose the urge to make house blocks. To my absolute delight I discovered that my EQ7 program had a few paper piecing house blocks in their library and I was off and running.

For this first block I played with one of the patterns in the EQ library to make my own little house. It was a good exercise to see how the buildings come together and how the design process will work. I could design star patterns in my sleep but a house is something completely new.

The block is 10 inches square, so there are no really little pieces involved and it was pretty easy to sew the 12 little block bits up. I raided my scrap bins for this project, which is always fun.

The final step is to sew all the sections of the block together, making the trees and the body of the house and then sewing it all into one block. The pattern pieces can be found here…wq house block pattern

My plan is to make 4 of these blocks, kind of like a mini neighborhood, and make them into a cute baby quilt. So stay tuned for some more buildings in the coming weeks…

24Mar2014

Finally Neoned out… for now

I am proud to present the last block of my Neon Pink quilt…

This pattern was fun to make and I think reflects a couple of the other blocks already in the quilt. You can find a free copy of the pattern I designed here…WQ Atomic Star block.

So now all of the neon blocks are done and all that is left to do is the maths for the sashing – made a little complex because the blocks finished up at 12 1/2 inches and 11 inches. In the beginning when I decided to make some friends for the two 11 inch PMQG orphan blocks I found, I did not realise I was making the maths harder. Augh….

I am sure it will be worth it in the end but for now I have my calculator and some graph paper out to see how to make this sucker work. Wish me luck!

17Mar2014

Nearly there…

Posted in neon quilt blocks, Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

After today I am just one block away from having my Neon pink quilt ready to put together… so without further ado here is my penultimate pink neon crazy…

The pattern is a free one that comes with the EQ system, so I need to check copyright and see if I can share it with you. If I can, I will put it one the paper piecing pattern page in the coming week.

I am definitely going to be remaking this block, because it would be AWESOME done scrappy. I have a cunning plan for the block already…

So next week I will post the last neon block for this quilt, but do not despair, as there is more neon in my future. I have one other orphan Neon quilt to put together for the Portland Modern Quilt Guild…. you have been warned.

10Mar2014

Miniture Quilts Paper Piecing Monday

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

I am back… sorry about the radio silence last week… I was kind of forced to take a little break but we are now back on-line and ready to go… starting with Paper Piecing Monday miniature style.

The Portland Modern Quilt Guild is currently taking part in some miniature quilt challenges, so I just had to give it a try. Because of the size of the quilt blocks usually used in these quilts, precision is incredibly important. Even the slimmest of miscalculations can cause big issues when you are working at such a small scale, unless of course, you work with a paper piecing pattern.

So I decided to use a simple 3 inch log cabin block for my Metallic Challenge mini quilt…

Of course I had to use one of my fave fabrics, Michael Miller’s Mirror Ball. It was just perfect for this challenge and worked well with the small scale block.

You can find the paper piecing pattern I used here…. miniature log cabin pattern. The blocks came together really quickly and my final quilt is 15 inches by 15 inches square and now all I have to do is work out how I want to back and quilt it.

24Feb2014

Paper Piecing Monday EPP Style

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

It is hexagon central here at Wombat Quilts. I have just started another hexagon quilt, this time a miniature quilt, as part of the Michael Miller “Glitz” Challenge our Modern Guild is doing. We were given 8 fat eighths of the fabulously Art Deco looking “Glitz” fabric line…

and I just had to make those dots into hexagons…

I have also been slowing plugging away on my bright daisy hexagon quilt which has been a wip for over a year now…

But the newest hexagon addition to the family is an amazing vintage hexagon top I picked up at a local thrift store for $10.

It was a revelation for me to see the hand workings on this top. It is stitched in most places using a simple running stitch to keep the hexagons in place…

and in a couple of places there is little more stitching, mainly where the seams are a little smaller…

This quilt top was found shoved in a basket with other fabrics… it has not been treated too well, I would say, recently but it has held up beautifully. There is only one place where I will have to do a little repair. On the other hand I have been stitching the bejebus out of my hexagons…

Lots and lots and lots of little stitches because I was scared it would not hold together. Having seen the work on my beautiful vintage hexagon, I am thinking of taking my stitch count down a little.

If you are interested in learning more about English paper piecing or want some hexagon templates check out my post from last year which has tips and links galore..

To finish off I thought I would share some photos of the amazing fabrics on my “new” vintage quilt top. Here are some my favorites…