A fun Bee block…

Posted in Quilt patterns by wombatquilts

This month I am the designated Quilter for my Do.Good.Stitches group….which means I get to set the block for the month that my other Bee members will be making. My recent down time allowed me to paw over quilting books for hours uninterrupted which was a wonderful pleasure…and one of the patterns I found in an old quilting book was this block called Homeward Bound…

The finished block is 12 inches square (12 ½ unfinished) and is pretty simple to put together… all you need is…

Four (4) 3 ½ x 3 ½ squares for the outer fabric (grey)

Four (4) 3 ½ x 5 inch rectangles of the cross fabric (electric blue)

One (1) 3 ½ x 3 ½ inch square of the center fabric (light blue)

Four (4) 2 x 5 inch strips of sashing (white)

Four (4) 2 x 3 ½ strips of sashing (white).

You can see above how I pieced the block together in segments which made for quick and accurate assembly. It is a fun block and I love the overall patterns these blocks are going to make…

I can not wait to get all the blocks in… it is going to be fun watching this quilt come together.

3Sep2015

A fabulous little Bee Block

Posted in Quilt patterns, Quilts by wombatquilts

It has been a while since I posted any of the Do Good Stitches quilt blocks I have been making. Every month I make blocks as part of this charity Bee and I love it. I look forward to the first of the month when the new pattern is put up on our Flickr Group and I always eagerly make the blocks. I love being challenged to make things that I would not usually make in colour schemes I may not necessarily think to put together.

Twice a year I get to be the Queen and set the block and in June I choose this block and colour scheme for my month….

The block is from a free pattern by Clover and Violet which they originally put up as part of a Christmas quilt they were making. The colour tweaks I made changed how the finished block looks and made for a striking quilt top…

I love how the yellow strings make a grid pattern and the stars just pop. Each of my fellow Do Good Bee members made two blocks, so there is so much variety in the stars, which I LOVE.

One of my favorite bits about being Queen Bee is getting to see all the blocks as they come in and ohh and ahh over the fabric used (I may have a bit of stash envy!).

When these blocks came in I absolutely fell in love with the Barbar fabric one of my fellow quilters used…

I have not seen this fabric before and am now obsessed with getting my hands on some. It is so fabulous. This quilt top is now awaiting quilting and binding and then it will go out into the world to Do Good! I am Queen again in November and I have already started planning what block I am going to set.

26May2015

A flurry of butterflies….

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday, Quilt patterns by wombatquilts

Yesterday was a public holiday here in the US and I fully embraced the good weather and took the day off…. so no paper piecing Monday this week. Instead I wanted to share one of the paper piecing projects I have been working on for the last week or so…

I have been making butterfly blocks using Lizzy House fabric and tone-on-tone white scraps. My obsession with making these blocks took seed when Lizzy’s new fabric line, Natural Histories came out and included this wonderful print…I had purchased a fabulous butterfly pattern a year or so ago from Juliet at Tartan Kiwi so I went to work making blocks. The pattern, if you are interested, is only $2.50 and can be bought HERE.

The pattern is for a 5 inch butterfly and it takes four parts to make one block….

The more of these I have made the quicker the process has become. There are some small bits to the pattern but nothing to complex… and I love the end result.

For my butterfly collection I also enlarged the pattern a little. The yellow butterfly above is the 5 inch block and the green butterfly is what I got when I enlarged the pattern to take up the whole of a 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper.

My finished butterfly collection will have both block sizes and a fun array of colours. I am using just Lizzy House fabric and trying not to repeat any fabric…and I love how they all look.

25Feb2015

New York Beauties

Posted in Colour Play, Quilt patterns by wombatquilts

A couple of weeks ago, at one of our Guild Sew Days I got an amazing burst of creative energy. It all started with the fabulous Bill Volkening and his amazing collection of vintage New York Beauty quilts. Bill is a quilt collector extraordinaire and a collection of his 1970’s quilt hung at QuiltCon last week.

Anyway Bill was showing some of us the roughs for a new book he has done which highlights his amazing collection of New York Beauty quilts from the 1850’s through to modern. I had never seen such an awe inspiring collection of quilts and I was immediately drawn to the wonderful patterns that were used to make them. If you are interested in seeing what I am talking about Bill has a fun slide show of 30 of his New York beauties up on line HERE.

Having just conquered my fear of curved piecing I thought I had to give this block a go, just to see if I could do it. The second part of the inspiration came about 20 minutes later when a friend from PMQG gave me the most amazing gift… a tin of Mirror Ball fat quarters. It seems Tracey had bought the tin years ago, before I had discovered the magic of Mirror Ball and not used it…she had seen my love of Mirror Ball first hand at the PMQG retreat (I may have drooled over her fabric) and decided to gift me her tin of magic. I was at first speechless and a little teary. It was such a generous gift and I do LOVE Mirror Ball. Anyway a long story short while I was petting my new fabric I stumbled across this colour scheme…

…and my new project/obsession was born. So this week I have been making New York Beauty blocks…

…lots of New York Beauty blocks.,..

I found some paper piecing patterns for blocks in my EQ7 program and I have been playing…

There has been lots of unpicking and learning but I am having fun. I am not sure what final layout will be but for now I am just enjoying the fun of making these blocks. Each one is different…each one is unique…each one has sparkle in it.

I am linking up with Lee and Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday.

30Jan2015

Constellation crosses

Posted in Quilt patterns, Quilts by wombatquilts

In a moment of crazy at the end of last year I decided that I would not start any new projects in January or February this year. I have so many wips and unfinished quilt tops I thought I needed to do something to clear the backlog. This “resolution” saw me pulling out some old unfinished blocks this week and getting this quilt top done…

I actually started making these blocks in March of last year. I had made a 4 inch paper pieced version of this block for the PMQG medallion and then blew the pattern up to 6 1/2 inches to play with. There is a link on my original post to the free paper piecing pattern in two sizes (4 and 6 inch) in you are interested.

So this week I made a pile more blocks and this morning finally got them all wrangled into a top.

The quilt uses the wonderful Constellation range by designer Lizzy House. I love the fun bright fabrics that Lizzy makes and though I was late to discovering her fabrics, I have been hoarding and using them for a couple of years. I do not think there is a quilt I have made in the last year or so that has not had Pearl Bracelets in it somewhere.

This range is all about stars and fun Constellations, but you could easily use this pattern in any fabric range…the trick is to make sure you have a nice contrast in your blocks and that you embrace the light and dark fabrics from the range.

To really up the contrast with this top I also pulled in some solid white fabric as well as the white on white Pearl Bracelets. I also did not shy away from adding a touch of red/purple. One of the fabrics in the line had a touch of this colour and I thought I would embrace it…just a little. I used the design rule of three and added three blocks with the purple.

I just love how the quilt seems to sparkle and your eyes are forced to move around the top. Now all that is left for me to do is remove the paper and quilt this sucker up!