Mini Kaleidoscope Quilt

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

Last week I looked at the bag of Lizzy House fabric scraps I had gathered in the last couple of months and I decided I needed to do something with them… a couple of hours later and I had made this little beauty…

Most of the scraps I was playing with were tiny little bits and so I designed a little, fat kaleidoscope block to make this quilt. A tiny paper pieced block allowed me to get accuracy with my piecing while being able to do some fun fussy cutting…

Each block is made up of four (4) pieces which were 1 1/2 inch square.. the finished block is 3 inches small. This was such a fun quilt to make, and I used a lot of my little white on white scraps as well as my precious Lizzy House bits.

If you are interested in making your own kaleidoscope mini quilt you can find the free paper piecing pattern here….WQ mini Kaleidoscope block.

I have signed up for one more mini quilt swap, so I warn you there will be some more paper pieced little quilts shortly.

22Jun2015

The Row by Row experience

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

I have only recently become aware of a program that is run over summer here in the USA called the Row by Row Experience. From June 21st thru to September 8th over two thousand quilt shops around the USA and Canada give away a free pattern, based on a theme. All you have to do is visit the store to get the pattern.

This years theme was H2O (water) and I was excited to work with my local quilt store, Modern Domestic, to design their Row by Row experience….Glass Half Full.

The remit was to design a block that was 8 inches high by 36 inches wide. I worked with Michelle Freedman to design a paper piecing block based on the idea of a glass of water.

My original block was 6 different paper piecing patterns for the water (you can see the my original test run above). Michelle then streamlined the idea into just one pattern sheet, which still gives you variety in the water but is easier to distribute.

You can pick up this pattern for free from Modern Domestic over the next couple of months. Most of the stores also have kits available for their blocks, which is helpful if your stash is somewhat lacking in blues! I turned my row into a table runner by simply adding a border strip…

If you are not able to make it to make it to Portland you can check out the Row by Row website to see if your local quilt store is participating… I know there are quite a few stores that have paper pieced their row… including Fabric Depot whose very cool paper pieced block I will definitely be hunting down.

And if you are outside the USA, don’t fret, at the end of the September many of the stores will make their patterns available digitally. I will let you know when Modern Domestic’s pattern becomes available.

15Jun2015

Designing a paper piecing pattern….

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

This week I have been playing with a paper piece block that I have designed for a friend’s quilt. She is a big fox fan and seeing she is getting married in August I thought a quilt was in order.

There are some great fox patterns out there…I love Elizabeth Hartman’s “Fancy Fox“….but I wanted to make Miss Katie something very special. Inspired by a print I saw at a local Market Stall, I came up with this block…

I initially sketched the idea in a my gridded notebook, then transferred the idea into the quilting program EQ. I tweaked a little and then did a test run.

I never print out numbers on the blocks in this initial phase, because part of the pattern testing process is to work out which pieces should be numbered in which order. In particular the decision of the first piece glued down is important (I select the most awkward shaped piece to start with if possible).

When all the pieces are made I then look at how to make sure that the proportions are right and that all the pieces are okay. With this pattern I went in and tweaked a few bits … I made the nose bigger and got rid of some extra lines that were not needed.

I will now go back into EQ and make the changes and finally add the numbers and do another test run. Then when I am happy I will launch into full-blown fox production mode…. an August deadline is looming and I have a lot of foxes to make!

So before I sign off the winner of the fabric bundle is….

Kirsten who wrote…”I am following along with your progress on this beautiful quilt as green is my favourite colour – all of your stars are just gorgeous and I love the LV backgroundl!”.

So the fabric will be winging its way to Kirsten. Thanks to everyone who entered. There was such a great response that I will definitely be doing this again…and soon.

12Jun2015

One finished quilt top and one giveaway…

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

This week, after a little procrastination. I finally finished sewing all my green stars into a quilt top…

I alternated the paper pieced blocks with 8 1/2 inch squares of low volume fabric… using mainly fabrics that had been used in the star blocks.

I sewed all the blocks together, keeping the paper on the stars. I have found if I remove the paper from the pattern before I sew everything together there can be issues making everything fit properly. There can be a lot of bias pieces in paper piecing and you want to minimize the wiggle…

When I had sewn all the stars and low volume blocks together I realized the quilt needed a border of some sort. I ended up making four flying geese blocks and interspersed them within the 3 inch border.

I love how the border and those geese bring the whole quilt together.

To celebrate finishing this quilt I thought I would do a little giveaway.

Up for grabs is this 18 fat eight cuts of fabric so you can make your own green star blocks – 12 different greens and 6 different low volumes. If you would like to win just leave a comment on this post and we will pick a winner on Monday. As always I am happy to post overseas.

THE COMPETiTION IS NOW CLOSED. Thanks.

8Jun2015

A little miscalculation…

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

This week I finally decided on the layout for my green star quilt….and in doing so realised I was one block short! So it was back to the drawing board…literally…and a new block was designed…

This is my Outlined star…a fun little star with 32 lovely little pieces. I designed this star after staring at the other blocks on my design wall for a week or so and it seems to fit nicely into the Green star mix.