Urban Chicken Fun

Posted in Quilt patterns, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

This week I manged to finish my first Urban Chicken quilt top…. I am so excited. I love this modern easy fun pattern.

The Urban Chicken block was designed for the Portland Modern Quilt Guild meetup by Michelle Freedman. You can find my original post and tutorial on making the block here.

When laying the quilt top out I had great fun making the chickens run all around… there really is a sense of silly to this quilt block that I love.

It is also a very forgiving block – wonky triangles, lots of scraps and bold bright colours. You can get away with a few squiffy seams if need be.

This is Urban Chicken number 1 for me. I have another one following close behind in warmer colours, as I set this pattern for my Do.good.stitches bee this month. You have been warned!

6Nov2013

Triangle Trauma – wip Wednesday

Posted in Scrap quilts, WIP Wednesday by wombatquilts

I was spurred this week to pull out an old work in progress by Ashley at Wasn’t Quilt in A Day. Her Mum told her that she could not start a new quilt until she had finished one of the ones she had already started. I took this sound advice and dusted off these blocks from the beginning of the year….

This quilt has been sitting in the cupboard because I am a little scared of triangles. This is only the second time I have worked with triangle-shaped blocks and I must admit I am not enjoying the process. You really need to be precise with your points and I have done soooo much unpicking. To help with the precision i am using a paper piecing pattern.

Emboldened by the challenge to finish this top, I pulled all the blocks I had made out and pinned them up on my design wall, using some solid fabric pink and olive triangles to break up the pattern a little.

There was then a flurry of activity to make the extra blocks I needed to make the quilt a usable size (14 blocks wide by 8 rows long).
My sewing machine was awash with strings of pink and olive fabric.

By mid afternoon I was happy with how things were looking and started sewing some of the rows of blocks together. I find this is the point where you really start to see how the finished quilt is going to look.

Last night there was a lot of unpicking….I am trying to be as precise as my patience will let me. Row by row I am going to get this sucker done.

This morning I sewed two of the rows together to check my alignment and to see how the colours and pattern are working. They are a little off in places but with this pattern it you have to look really hard to notice.

I am determined to have this top pieced by the end of today… if only so I can start something new. That is Ashley’s mum’s rule and I am going to try to quilt by it. One finished before another started. I can do this… I think!

18Oct2013

Floral Crackers Fabulous Finish

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

I was so excited last night when I took deliver of my finished Floral Cracker’s quilt. The fabulous Rachel from 2nd Avenue Studios had used her amazing long arm/free motion quilting skills to complete this project for me.

I meet Rachel through the Portland Modern Quilting Guild and fell in love with her quilts. She does the most amazing wonky scrappy creative quilts. I was a huge fan and when she offered to quilt Floral Crackers for me I was beyond excited. Rachel also makes a lot of charity quilts and also does long arming quilting of charity quilts for the Guild. Basically she is a rock star.

I made the blocks for this quilt months ago using my black and white stash and lots of crazy floral fabrics. i raided my Kaffe Fassett stash, my Amy Butler stash as well as my friend Lisa’s stash. You can find my original post about the block, along with pattern links on how to make it here.

Rachel used a wonderful free motion flower pattern for the quilting. The shape is very “Kaffe” and mirrors several of the fabrics in the quilt.

I struggled to get decent pictures that do the quilt and quilting justice. Why do photos never capture the true beauty of a quilt?

To back the quilt, Rachel went with a gorgeous light orange dot solid. It is the perfect simple accompaniment to the crazy busy front.

Rachel also kindly did the binding for me on this quilt with her new Bernina binding magic thingy…. and I love it almost as much as I love the quilting. As a nod to me she used Kaffe Fassett’s “Aboriginal Dot” fabric.

I know it is kind of cheating but I am counting this as one of my October Project Linus quilts… I did make the top!

FLORAL CRACKER DETAILS:

Technique: Paper Piecing

Finished Block size: 7 inches

Quilt size: 56″ x 70″

11Oct2013

Rainbow I Spy Quilt done and dusted

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

Week two of October and I have another quilt finished despite some walking foot hiccups and a Briar Rose obsession. This week’s Project Linus finish is a little bit of a cheat – I pulled an old unfinished top out of the cupboard and quilted it up. But it is still a finish and still counts… right?

I made the top for this quilt about 3 years ago and finishing it up was an interesting exercise which showed me how much my piecing has improved. All over this quilt there are seams that just do not align…

A simple square quilt and my edges are squiffy. I am a little embarrassed but pleased to say that I have got better over the years. Plus the small mistakes here and there do not detract from the fun of this quilt.

The colours are bright and the fabric is varied. There is so much to see in this quilt, it is going to make for a wicked game or two of “I Spy”. And it is was so easy to put together, lots of 4 1/2 inch blocks in a graduating colour scale.

The quilting is simple… more straight lines. The backing is also simple, another IKEA fabric (part of a 100% cotton duvet cover).

All finished off with some purple binding.

I know this binding is a little crazy but I was out of solid navy fabric, which is my usual go to binding for a rainbow quilt. But now I have excuse to go shopping. YIPPEE!

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.