My first finish for 2015

Posted in Other fun stuff by wombatquilts

Okay I have a quilt finished…and it is was on my wip list for this year so yeah me!

I started this quilt last year but it took me while to finish…and if I am honest I had some help. My fabulous friend Lisa did the quilting on this baby using her wonderful Bernina (I have such sewing machine envy it is ridiculous).

The loud, bright colours of this quilt were inspired by my local Shell Service station (aka. gas station). You can find my original post, with the paper piecing pattern I used, here.

And if you look closely you can see some of the handful of blocks that I reversed…that is they have yellow geese with a red background. I used this reverse colour scheme on the back of the quilt too…

I must admit I love how the back turned out and it was so easy to do. I used a couple of sheets of my husbands extra large graph paper (I am hoping he does not notice they are missed!) to make a paper pieced pattern and just sewed away.I may be a little addicted now to putting big versions on the block on the back…we will see how long it lasts!

This baby is now headed to Project Linus to be loved on….

14Jan2015

Liberty Love

Posted in WIP Wednesday by wombatquilts

Last week, while drugged up on cold and flu medication, I decided to play with my small stash of Liberty fabrics. I started slowly collecting fabric just over a year a go, when a darling friend gave me two Liberty lawn fat quarters as a thank you present.

For those of you not familiar with the fabric it is a light weight, beautiful cotton that comes in the most fabulous designs and is made by the famous British store Liberty of London….Ironically I have bought quite a bit of stuff at Liberty in my time in England but never went to the fabric section!

I had originally popped my Liberty cherry with the sample pillow for my Introduction to Paper Piecing class at Modern Domestic (my main Liberty enabler!).

This 16 inch star used some bigger slices of my stash but I loved how the delicate Liberty fabric plays against the Essex linen.

Anyway this week I had the crazy idea to make some mini dresden plate flowers with my Liberty stash. I wanted to go small because I also had a collection of 21/2 inch squares that my darling BF had bought back for me from London…and I wanted hand work because it meant I did not have to leave the couch. The end result was this…

The finished 16 point flower is 5 inches wide.

Somewhere during this process my husband declared that I had officially gone crazy and I think he might be right. I have made up a little travel kit and I am now obsessed with making these things….

I found a pattern sheet on-line at AMC-Quilts that I used (LINK HERE)… their PDF pattern was the perfect size and I just printed it on card stock and cut out the petal pieces and started to sew.

I am not sure what I am going to do with them but for now I am happy to just make away.

12Jan2015

A spikey little paper piecing Monday…

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

Okay I had a bit of fun with this block…it is a pointy little number…

It is a little crest like a little star like…and it is uses the easy triangle format that I am a little addicted to at the moment.

This free 8 inch pattern involves only 28 pieces and you can down load the PDF here…Sharp Star.

Enjoy…

9Jan2015

A special QuiltCon reject

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

I finally got the opportunity this week to photograph the beautiful wonky star quilt that was made last year at my first PMQG Charity Sew Day.

I originally posted about making these blocks back in February last year and you can find the original post HERE. I really loved the quilt top but extra love it now that Rachel at 2nd Avenue Studios wove her quilting magic.

Rachel free motion quilted these wonderful wandering lines that fill the scrappy white space fabulous while also highlighting parts of all the blocks.

All over the quilt there are these little moments where the lines move around the fussy cutting…

…and around and through the stars. The quilting perfectly compliments the scrappy wonky offset stars.

This quilt is now in our Charity pool and will be used this year…and I am in the process of preparing for the January Charity Sew Day. Every month PMQG members meet at the wonderful Modern Domestic and make blocks and chat and hang out. Every month we make a quilt top together, all of them bright and fun and all of them destined to do good in the community. It is such a good thing.

8Jan2015

Looking forward and looking back…

Posted in Other fun stuff by wombatquilts

This week, as I was reading peoples posts of their quilting goals for 2015, I was reminded that I had made a list for 2014 and that I really should revisit it….

I was a little hesitant but I am please to say that 2014 was not a complete bust and I did accomplish some of my 2014 goals including finishing my Briar Rose Quilt, my Granny Square quilt, my Red star quilt and my Tula Pink quilt. I am also very pleased that I managed to conquer my fear of curves this year.

2014 also saw some great firsts for me including being a finalist in this years MQG Michael Miller Challenge with this quilt…

and I was published in a magazine…

and I was thrilled to be selected as part of Sew Mama Sew’s “31 Inspiring Quilters” series.

Unfortunately the 2014 list also contained some things that now have to carry over into my 2015 list so to those projects I need to add…..

1. Quilt up my UFO quilt tops including my Jaffa quilt …

My Altlantic Sea quilt…

and my PMQG Medallion Quilt

2. Finish some of the projects that are currently sitting in boxes in my craft room including..

and

I actually have 11 shoe boxes with WIP blocks in them and 9 quilt tops which need quilting. I may have a commitment problem, I admit it!

So I have decided that in January I am not allowed to start any more projects at all and I am going to spend January and February trying to clear the backlog. I am not sure if I am strong enough not to start anything new but some of the projects are so old it will feel like they are new…right…right… oh please say they will!