Paper Piecing Monday

For this weeks block I present Carol Doak’s “Montana Star”, another fabulous pattern from her book “50 Fabulous Paper Pieced Stars“. Yes I am addicted. Yes I should move on, but when there are such great patterns to work with it is hard.

This block is a nice simple pattern with just 56 pieces that make up the eight parts to the block.

Making this block was not without its “issues”, though. I may have had a slip of concentration during construction – I am not sure if I can still blame jet lag. The result was this interesting block section and a lot of unpicking…

I maybe onto something with this mistake….it could make for an interesting quilt. I will however, leave experimenting with this for another time.

20Mar2013

Sun and Sea Quilt – WIP Wednesday

Posted in Quilt patterns, Scrap quilts, WIP Wednesday by wombatquilts

We have returned from Australia to a wet and cold Portland. Last week we were on the beach enjoying the weather and now we have freezing rain. It is meant to be spring but definitely feels like winter. To get myself out of my weather rut I decided to make a sunshine and beach inspired quilt this week.

Too start I raided my stash and pulled all the golden yellow/orange and sea blue fabric I could find.

This bright a cheery collection was then cut to make block pieces for a simplified Iowa star block (Block Central has an Iowa star paper piecing pattern that can be used) . I am not sure what the official term for this block is, so if you know please enlighten me.

In my jet lagged haze this block was about all I could handle. It is made up of four 5 inch blocks and all I had to do was sew down the two sides of the central triangle. Easy peasy. I managed to make quite a few block pieces before the sleepy haze took over. Going back to Oz is fun but the time difference is a killer.

There was, however, one advantage to the 14 hour flight back to the USA – I had some time to do some hexies. I had never done English paper piecing before but I had been drooling over other people’s hexies for months. Then, just before I flew out the Portland Modern Quilt Guild did a tutorial and I was hooked. To prepare for the flight I:

1. printed a pile of 1 inch hexagon blocks (I used the Hexagon creator at http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/hexagonal/) ,

2. cut a stack of fabric squares – lots of fussy cut bits a pieces; and

3. found a pair of small travel scissors that would not freak out the airline security guys.

So in between sleeping I managed to make this wonderful collection of hexies…. 51 down, 549 too go.

I am not sure what I am going to do with them. My husband is encouraging me to work out what I want to achieve before I get to far into making hexies (he is concerned by my lack of a plan!). I have been toying with the idea of doing the classic hexie flower and I may try to a couple to see how they look.

Now it is back to sunshine and the beach…..

4Mar2013

Paper Piecing Monday

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday, Quilt patterns by wombatquilts

Back again for another Monday of paper fun. I worked again this week from 50 Fabulous Paper Piecing Stars but shook it up a bit. In the front of the book the author outlines how to make the 50 patterns in the book go a little further, by using two different patterns to make one block. Here is the results of my first experiment.

This star uses one half of the Utah star and one half of the Nebraska star, to make a fabulous new star using just 52 pieces to make. I did go less scrappy this time – keeping the attention on the pattern and not the individual block pieces.

I am still not sure if these pointy stars will fit in with the compass stars I have already made but I am having such fun making them all. So see you next week for the next installment.

1Mar2013

Colours of this week are purple & aqua!

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

This week has been a weird week. I have not got as much done as I would have liked, as our family is preparing to run away to Australia for a couple of weeks. In between the packing and the last-minute shopping I did managed to get this quilt finished.

This quilt is made up of 16 of these 12 inch blocks.

I used a really easy pinwheel paper piecing pattern and lots and lots of scraps of fabric. There are a number of simpler versions of this block on the web but I love the extra punch of the added pinwheel. The pattern and dimensions I used are:

Eight of these pieces make up one of the finished blocks. If I was to do the quilt again I would probably stick with more strongly contrasting fabrics – the blocks that have the dark purple against the aqua are so much more punchy I think . The contrast makes the pinwheel pattern really pop.

I am still doing just straight quilting…. maybe when I return from vacation I will be sufficiently relaxed to forget the stippling nightmare. I have to be braver with my quilting. The backing is a selection of different fabrics I had in my stash. Nothing too exciting but I like how it looks, particularly the Erin McMorris “Somersault” fabric.

I finished it all up with a scrappy purple binding. I do love scrappy binding – bits of solids, bits of prints, different shades, different patterns. The scrappy does not work with all quilts but it seemed to be just right for this one.

Now it is back to packing and cleaning…..

18Feb2013

Paper Piecing Monday

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday, Quilt patterns by wombatquilts

Welcome to part 12 of paper piecing Monday. My husband asked me how many stars I am going to make for this quilt, he was a little scared I was not going to stop!. I decided that 20 was the number to aim for. It will make a 4 block x 5 block quilt which will be a nice size for some kid.

This week I have one of the last compass squares from Quilting on the Square.

The paper piecing pattern can be found here Block_9_Compass_of_Many_colors.

I changed the pattern a little, choosing to use the stripped fabric instead of using another lot of background fabric. I wanted to try and get a star that was a little different from some of the others I had done.

The pattern involves 80 pieces of fabric made into 8 triangles. The finished block is 12 inches (like all the blocks I have posted so far). I threw the stars together to show you a very rough work in progress shot. I am not sure that it all works together yet, but hope as more blocks are added it will start to look more cohesive.