Rethinking Brown

My slight disdain for the colour brown began when I was a kid in art class…when mixing paints it was all to easy to mix too many colours and end up with a dirty brown colour…. and it happened to me all to frequently.

You do not have the same problem when making quilts, but I was still resistant to using brown at all. In traditional quilting brown has long been considered a neutral colour, but Modern Quilters on the whole tend to be wary of it.

Strangely though I have quite a bit of brown in my stash…not as much as I have pink or navy blue, but more than I should have. I have also had a few brown scraps given to me over the years and at the end of last year my brown scraps hit critical mass… there was only one thing to do…

Yep I made a scrappy improv quilt using my brown scraps and a touch of orange… and it was an interesting experience.

I forgot how many fabulous fabrics Heather Ross has done in brown… I used her seahorses, butterflies, octopus and plants in this quilt.

On of my other favorite designers, Lizzy House, also has done some lovely browns… with mice and cats and of course my all time fav – Pearl Bracelets.

And in between all that novelty goodness is a eclectic collection of prints including a handful of batiks.

It was kind of fun to challenge myself to work mainly in brown… it made me rethink the colour. The result was I came up with a few more brown colour combinations I want to play with including…

A red based brown with teal….

Brown, yellow and pink…

And the classic brown and baby blue (not dissimilar to one of this years Pantone colours).

So you have been warned that there may be more brown appearing in this feed. So is there a colour you have in your stash that you avoid?

Quilt Details:

Quilt block: Modern Improv
Fabric: Various scraps
Quilt Size: 48 x 48 inches

20Jan2016

Paper Piecing Wednesday edition 5

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

Welcome to what I think is my fifth time posting Paper Piecing Monday on a Wednesday. If you think how many PP Monday’s I have done 5 misses is not to bad…right!

Anyhow I have another Hodge Podge block for you this week.. this time it a 6 inch version of the classic Centennial block….

I had fun using all the the little bits of yellow I had laying around (many left over from my Starry Night Quilt) but using just one colour does not really do this star justice, here is my favored alternative colouring….

So the free PDF pattern for this quilt can be found here…. centennial block pattern I now need to move away from the star patterns I think, otherwise I may get type cast…

11Jan2016

The Hodge Podge continues

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

So this week I am taking a break from Hodge Podge star blocks for a nice simple Octagon…

This blocks would be fabulous for a fussy cut mini quilt… and it is on my “To Do” list with my Heather Ross stash. You can download the free PDF pattern here…octagon pattern.

And just in case you were wondering how it was all looking…. this is my Hodge Podge collection so far…

Not to shabby…. and since this photo was taken I have added a few more blocks!

8Jan2016

Everybody loves a wonky star…right….

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

My final finishes for 2015 and first finish of 2016 has been putting the binding on a couple of wonky star quilts. If you follow this blog you know how much I love a wonky star, and I found during my recent health issues that I could make wonky stars without too much effort or thought (I seem to have good muscle memory for this quilt block!)….

What made these quilts so easy for me to make was that I used some of my huge stash of 5 inch squares and lots of scraps. For this first quilt I grabbed a pile of blue squares and my bag of white/cream scraps and got to work.

What you can not see too well in the photos is that each center of the star is made up of improv scraps. This is my favorite bit of the process… sewing all the little scraps together to make my own fabric.

For all my wonky star quilts I did simple straight line quilting, but with this quilt I used a variegated thread I found in my thread box. I kind of love how it turned out…

For my next two wonky star quilts I took some scraps of Hoffman batiks that I had been given and had some fun…

This is my favorite of the quilts… I love how the soft pink and blue play together….

Plus I got to play with novelty prints which makes me so happy. The background for the stars uses 4 different Batiks and with all these quilts the colour variation in the background adds a nice texture to the overall quilt I think.

I got to back my pink stars with some of my favorite fabric from Michael Miller. I love the mermaids so much…and this fabric was so perfect for the quilt it had to be used.

For the background of this quilt I used creams/beige batiks from a Hoffman layer cake or two. I do not use batiks much in my quilting but I love how they work as a support to the modern quilting fabrics. For this quilt I played with batting loft and used a wool batting.

The batting gives the quilt a lovely warmth and softness… it is nicely puffy. I can see why long arm quilters would choose to use a higher loft batting, as it really does make the quilting stand out.

So there are my last and first finishes. Very simple, very easy and kind of fun. Each quilt finishes at 41 inches square, a perfect size for our local Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.

4Jan2016

Here is to a quilty 2016….

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

Like so many others I have spent the last couple of days pondering 2015 and looking forward to 2016. My hope for the coming year is to quilt more, visit the ER less, clear most of my huge pile of WIPs and get this blog re-designed. To get things started I made a list of my work in progresses… which promptly freaked me out.

I have 11 personal quilts needing quilting including Starry Night …

and two of my curved quilts…

I have 9 piles of blocks that need to be made into tops including finding something to do with this collection of blocks…

There are also two Do Good Stitches quilts in need of quilting…

and a pile of PMQG quilt blocks that need to be made into tops. I was so overwhelmed by the task ahead I decided to go to my “happy place” and made some more Hodge Podge blocks….

So for the New Year I have added another six inch star to the collection…

This block was is called the Eight Pointed Star in the old catalogs and I see this block as the great grand mother of the wonky star blocks I love so much. You can find the free pattern for this star here….eight pointed star pattern.

I am now heading back to into the fray and hope to get a couple of quilts basted today. I made a pledge not to start any new projects for all of January…. I am just going to focus on getting some things finished. Wish me luck!