Christine’s Quilt

Posted in Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

Some how, in between meetings, deadlines, dr’s appointments and the usual day to day chaos I managed to finish the top for my sister in law’s quilt. I was of course hoping to finish the whole quilting process by today but life had other plans. This is as far as I have got…

I made the blocks for this quilt using the Trip Around the World process and then instead of sewing the strips in order I mixed things up a little. My blocks ended up looking random and pixellated and a little cool. You can find my original post about the block here.

So now I have a quilt top made up of 2 inch squares of solid blues with a hint of blue purple thrown in. My stash of solid blues is now almost depleted but I am so thrilled with the result.

Now I just have to quilt this cascading waterfall up, bind it and get it to SoCal. Not a problem!

6Dec2013

Baby it’s cold outside…

Posted in Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

I woke up this morning to find that Portland is covered in a lovely layer of snow. This does not happen often, and as an Aussie it still absolutely delights me. I was jumping round the house opening all the curtains and gleefully claiming “ohhh it is so pretty”. Then I realised I needed to photograph my quilt this morning. Glee gone.

As much as I love snow I am not a huge fan of being cold. But I rugged up, 4 layers deep, put on some gloves and bravely ventured out to photography my just finished quilt top.

This was the perfect quilt to photograph in the snow, and I have decided to call the quilt “Icicles”…it seemed like a fitting title.

This quilt is a Do.good.stitches project. I recently joined the “Hope Circle” and when it was my turn to set the block I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

We used Julie at 627Handworks “Icky Thump” block – one of the easiest and most effective paper piecing patterns EVER. You can find the free pattern here and my original post here.I love how much variety there is in this quilt. If I had made all the blocks myself the quilt top would not be this interesting – I would have stuck with light greys and turquoises. The wonderful ladies of my quilt circle instead provided me with such wonderful blocks, such variation in greys that the quilt really sings. I can not wait to get the back made and the quilt finished.

29Nov2013

No turkey here…just some Urban Chickens

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

After a day full of Thanksgiving turkey yesterday, I thought I would stick with the poultry theme, but shake it up a little. Somewhere in between baking tons and tons of pies this week I managed to finish my Urban Chicken Quilt.

This block is so fun and so easy to make… I set it as one of my Do.good.Stitches Bee blocks so you will be seeing another version on this site in the next month or so. My tutorial for making this block can be found here.

I really do love how easy this quilt block is. I think it will be my new “go to” block when I need to get a kids quilt done quickly. Though next time I think I will put some more prints into the quilt, not just tone on tones. I also want to try to make one just using solids. Oh I have too many ideas and not enough time.

For the quilting on this, I just went with straight lines, running either side of the ditch. At some point, as my FMQ gets better I would like to quilt one of these with “chickens”, that is triangles, all over it.

To back this quilt I used the last of my IKEA green and blue fabric. This fabric has been a great way to back my quilts and I am going to keep my eye out for more of it. The backing is one solid piece, but it looks like I have sewn together a pile of solid fat quarters.

The finishing touch is an electric blue binding… I seem to go through a lot of binding in electric blue for some reason. It is either that or someone/something is eating my blue binding.

So there she is…my first finished Urban Chicken quilt. I am now off to make myself a turkey sandwich… got to love Thanksgiving day leftovers.

22Nov2013

Tricky Triangles finally finished

Posted in Finished Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

I am very very very pleased to say that my pink and green triangle quilt is finally all done. I have procrastinated with this quilt in new and exciting ways over the last 6+ months… but she is now completed and I can move on with the rest of my life.

I must admit, in the spirit of full disclosure, that I had planned for this quilt to be bigger than what she ended up as, but I got to the point where I had had enough and just went with the blocks I had made. Her finished dimensions are 45 inches x 50 inches which is a smallish kids quilt.

I first posted this block way back in April… I had been given a small scrap pile of olive green fabric and wanted to do something with it. Hot pink fabric was chosen to go with the olive and a triangle paper pieced pattern from the “Modern Blocks” book was chosen. I was so optimistic with that first post I titled it “Triangle Love”.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, when I decided to bite the bullet and finish this sucker… but now I was referring to it as “Triangle Trauma“. Oh what a difference time makes….

Now all is said and done I am really happy with how this quilt turned out…but will not be jumping into another triangle quilt for a while! For the backing of the quilt I used a piece of Densye Schmidt which worked perfectly with the quilt top.

For the quilting I selected a random triangle, quilted around it and then radiated the quilting out from there. It is straight line quilting but with a twist. I went with pink thread of course, because you can never get enough pink in my opinion!

I nearly went with pink binding but opted for a Kona olive green instead – I think it made the pink pop a little more.

So now that I have finished a quilt, I am now, under Ashley’s mum’s rules, allowed to start another one. I have a pattern picked out and fabric pulled… stay tuned.

Quilt Details:

Technique: Modern scrap

Block: Paper pieced triangle pattern from “Modern Blocks”

Finished size: 45″ x 50″

13Nov2013

I have a confession to make…

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

…deep breath…. here goes….I am a messy quilter. You may not be able to tell from what I have put up on the site but in the last couple of weeks the truth has become harder and harder to ignore.

So what has forced this revelation…. Quilting Bees. Over the last couple of weeks I have been getting quilt blocks from around the country – I was “Queen Bee” for both ScrapBeeLicous Bee and Do.good.stitches Hope Circle.

So here is the evidence, as I see it. Exhibit A…. a block received for the Do.good.stitches Bee.

Please note the neat seams. The lack of loose threads. The overall precision and beauty of the back of the block.

Now Exhibit B…. my Icky Thump block for the same quilt.

It is down right embarrassing. In my defense I taught myself to quilt and never knew that you should carefully cut threads. Since seeing my fellow quilters blocks I have started taking more care with my threads but I still trim my paper piecing with scissors.

With these startling revelations and confessions, there is only one saving grace…. you really can not tell from the front of the quilts.

When setting this block for the Bee, I did not realise that most of my fellow Hope Circle had not paper pieced. I believe I drove a couple of them to drink. It really did not occur to me that there are people out there that have not tried paper piecing – I wrongly assumed that it was a technique commonly used.

I set this block because it was an easy block to do, but very very effective. Some of you may recognize the inspiration from a post earlier in the year.

I made this block using Julie at 627handworks free Icky Thump paper piecing pattern. I loved it so much and was determined to make a full quilt in this colour way.

The quilt is coming together nicely… I am still awaiting a few more blocks in the post and then I can put the top together. The finished top will be 4 blocks wide x 5 blocks long…. and fabulous.