Briar Rose Quilt Top finished

Posted in Quilts by wombatquilts

I managed to finish up my Briar Rose Quilt top this week… and I am loving how it came together.

It really helps that I am using Heather Ross’s marvelous fabric line, Briar Rose and a great block pattern, Labyrinth by Red Pepper Quilts. If you want to read more about the block and the start of this quilt you can check out my original post.

The block is traditionally pieced, there was not a piece of paper in sight. My seams are a little squiffy in places but the pattern is so easy to follow and so forgiving it did not take me long to whip this top up.

It was an interesting process for me using the whole line of fabric and not my usual scraps. If I “blocked” myself into a colour/pattern corner I had very limited choices to get myself out (usually I just add another fabric from my stash!). I wanted to use all the fabrics in the line as equally as possible, but also wanted to get the subtle hint of a light block/dark block pattern in the top. I found myself fudging the last couple of blocks to make this work.

I really had to be careful not to use the strawberry fabrics too much. They are my favorite of this collection and I found myself wanting to put them in every block.

And at the end of this process I have enough scraps left to play some more with the Briar Rose line. Yipee!

4Oct2013

A solid finish

Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

I committed this week to try to finish a quilt a week for October… and I mean baste, quilt and bind. I want to try to get as many quilts finished and delivered to Project Linus before the holidays. A crazy goal I know, but I have to give it a go.

To start this slightly mad schedule I decided to make another trip around quilt. I love these quilts, they are so easy and fun to make. This one is a little different for me can you tell how?

Those of you who know my work will note a distinct lack of pattern on the fabric. Yep I made a completely solid quilt. I have only made one of these before and it was a disaster, luckily this one came out much much better.

My Trip Along started life as a jelly roll, that has been sitting in my stash for quite a while….

I love the colours of the roll, but did not know what to do with it until I had to make some Bee trip around blocks recently. Those blocks inspired me to make another Trip Around quilt and so the fun started. I managed to get 16 x 12 inch blocks out the one jelly roll (with a little finagling to get the last block complete).

With the first Trip Around quilt I did I went scrappy, bright and used the traditional block layout but with this quilt I went with a wave layout.

My hand is still not allowing me to do any quilting other than straight lines, but luckily I think it works perfectly with this quilt top. I quilted diagonally across the top using a nice Sulky thread to add some shine to the stitches, my way of compensating for the lack of print on the fabric.

To finish it all off I had to find a piece of backing fabric that would compliment and offset the solid fabric front. I was thrilled to find in my stash this AMAZING Alexander Henry print.

Here is a close up detail on the fabulous jungle print. It really is the most perfect fabric for this quilt.

All that was left was to label and machine bind the quilt. Staying true to the front of the quilt I went with a Kona solid binding in dusty purple.

So one quilt down for this month a few more to go…

Fine print: I do reserve the right to subtly or not so subtly pull out of my “one quilt a week” schedule. I also reserve the right to call myself crazy for setting such a schedule.

27Sep2013

Lost Geese Quilt top finished

Posted in Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

This week I managed to get my “Shell logo” inspired flying geese quilt top finished. By the time I had finished laying out this quilt top it had earned the name “Lost Geese”, can you guess why?

Yep is it a little crazy… but kind of fun. Lots of novelty fabric and fun stuff to make the eyes really explore the madness.

I had a lot of fun making the “geese” go all over the place. I love the lack of pattern or rhythm to the piecing (though it frustrated my husband a little). Too really throw things into disarray I added a smattering of yellow triangles on a red background. Chaos rules!

I paper pieced these blocks as I love to have sharp clear triangles in my flying geese and paper piecing is the only way I personally can get that precision. My original post has a paper piecing pattern you can grab if you are interested in trying some geese.

This top has been added to the pile that need basting. I am going to see if I can convince my hubby to help me again this weekend to baste a quilt or two.

23Aug2013

Another log cabin done and dusted…

Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

I managed to get my Blush log cabin quilted and bound this week. I am so thrilled with how this quilt finished up and can not wait to see how it washes.

I quilted Blush using the diagonal lines of the log cabin block as a guide. I love how the how this simple quilting adds extra interest to the log cabin.

I must admit I am looking forward to trying some of the free-motion techniques I learned last week at the PMQG Meet Up, but I have a few weeks before my wrist is up for the challenge. So the next few quilts will involve straight lines in some shape or form and in the meantime I will do my free-motion exercises in my new graph paper note-book. As instructed by Rachel (of 2nd Ave Studios) I will be using pen only for the doodling. No erasing.

I found the perfect fabric piece in my stash for the back of this quilt – the Weekend by Erin Morris fabric worked perfectly with a little bit of pink supporting fabric.

The final touch was a solid binding in Magenta which just bought the whole quilt together.

Now I am just a few stitches away from finishing my Yummy quilt so it is back to the sewing machine.

I am linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts and TGIFF.

24May2013

An almost finished Friday

Posted in Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

Last night I finally finished pulling all the paper off my floral crackers quilt. 80 blocks, 79 different floral fabrics and 1/2 a ton of paper later I have this beauty.

There was finally a break in the rain this morning, so I dashed out to take this photo. Not perfect conditions but I was glad for any sort of respite from the deluge.

Enough about the weather… back to quilting. The top is made using the traditional cracker quilt block. I paper piece this top but you can find links to making the pattern on my original post here.

I used as many bright multi-coloured floral fabrics as I could find and only accidentally doubled up on one fabric. There is a lot of Kaffe Fassett in this quilt along with Amy Butler and Denyse Schmidt.

I used random black and white fabric for the background of the pattern but if I was to make this quilt again I would probably go with a low volume fabric option with more colour in it. Don’t get me wrong, I like the black and white but I think in hindsight more colour in the background would have made a different type of quilt top.

This quilt already has a home to go to. I have till the middle of June to get it finished, so it can be presented to a graduating foster kid in the Portland area. Project Linus every year makes sure kids graduating from the foster system & high school have a quilt to take with them on the next stage of their life.

But for now I am off to clean up the paper mess I have made…. it is the curse of paper piecing!