My highlights from the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show

Posted in Other fun stuff by wombatquilts

I beg your indulgence as I replace this week’s Paper Piecing Monday with a selection of highlights from my weekend at the Sister’s Outdoor Quilt Show. First up has to be…

The firemen putting up the quilts. We arrived early (around 7.45am) to set up the PMQG bits and pieces for the show and managed to see quite a few of the quilts go up.

This was my first time to the Sister’s Show and I was blown away by the volume of quilts. Everywhere you look there were quilts hanging from building… over a thousand of them in total.

What follows is a smattering of the quilts that caught my eye on Saturday, starting with some of the PMQG quilts…

: Ann Marie Cowley’s Pantone Quilt

: Cheri Langley’s Converging Corners Quilt

And on the other side of the building Elizabeth Hartman’s new Sampler quilt was hanging…

There were modern quilts scattered all over town including…

: Parts Department by Jeanette Pilak

: Untitled by Maren Johnson

This quilt is made up of the same little block, the detail is just amazing….

: Detail of Lines and Spaces by Carol Webb

: Detail of Teal Zeal by Elizabeth Beck

In the air-conditioned library (it got close to 100 degrees outside) local quilt artists Wendy Hill and Pat Pease had an exhibition of their amazing work…

And the Central Oregon Modern Quilt Guild had a wonderful exhibition of its members quilts, which all used the Ohio Star block in the most wonderful ways including Katy’s Camp Fire Ohio Star…

and this wonderful quilt with the Ohio Star printed onto the quilt… genius!

: Ohio Wedding by Christy Merrit

Scattered around town there were a number of quilts that used denims in their construction including…

: Aerial View by Diana Jacks

The details in this quilt are amazing..

I can not imagine piecing such a thick fabric let alone quilting it… but Diane Jackson managed to do the most amazing quilting on her piece “Red Square”.

: Detail of Red Square by Diane Jackson

Animals were also well represented in the show with my favorites being this fellow…

and Elizabeth Hartman’s Liberty Fox quilt…

There were of course hundreds of more classic quilts including the fabulously scrappy…

: Pineapples for Joanne by Jane Jensen Davis

: Poppy Blaze Big Bang by Sheree Lloyd

As well as some beautiful vintage quilts….

But my favorite of the show has to be this beauty…

: Under the Waves by Malleva Abenes

It is a seriously amazing quilt… and that wave… wow….

To finish up I leave you with our Modern Quilters group shot. Towards the end of the day a group of modern quilters from all over gathered to say hi before scattering to the wind…

11Jul2014

My Michael Miller Challenge Quilt

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

I finally finished my MQG Challenge quilt this week, just inside the deadline. This is the first of these fabric challenges I have done it was fun to challenge myself to use the fabrics given with only some solids in a supporting role. The fabrics I started with were:

After a month of umming and ahhing I finally settled on a plan… log cabins. A classic block that I approached in a completely different way (for me anyway).

As soon as I started cutting the fabulous challenge fabric into 1 inch strips I saw the patterns and the colours so differently. With the help of a couple of yards of Couture Cotton in Soft White and smattering of Couture in Breeze, Sun, Apple, Dirt, Spa and Fog the 7 inch log cabins came together.

I placed the colour strips randomly around the log cabin., and was not afraid to chop up a log into different colors.

I managed to use every scrap of fabric I could.

The wonderful flower print in particular was great fun to work with, as every piece was so different.

For the back of the quilt I “borrowed” some of a friends extra fabric, as well as some of the scraps left over from my top…

For the quilting I went with straight lines in a plaid formation, dictated by the log cabins. I used a cream thread and stitched right down the middle of the logs and I love the result.

The finishing touch was to add some white binding. I played with other colours but the white was the least intrusive binding. There is a small splash of blue amongst the white binding, but you have to really search for it!

I must admit it was a challenge for me to work with this much white. I am not particularly neat and if you add to that a black cat and a clumsy husband and you have a recipe for disaster. Luckily I managed to get it photographed before it got too dirty… about 5 second after the photos were taken it got its first splotch of dirt thanks to the cat! So the quilt is heading to the washing machine now…

Quilt details:
Name: Chopped petals
Pattern: 7 inch log cabin block
Technique: Paper piecing
Finished size: 42 x 42
Fabric: Michael Miller Petal Pinwheels & Couture cotton

9Jul2014

Wee Wanders WIP Wednesday

Posted in WIP Wednesday by wombatquilts

This week I have been playing with a selection of the Wee Wander’s fabric range by Michael Miller. I love this fabric and have had a blast playing this week.

Using the fabric for inspiration I pulled supporting fabric from my stash and ended up with this lovely bundle.

As soon as I bought the Wee Wanders, I knew what block I wanted to use – the Rolling Stone Block which dates back to the late 19th century…

I found this block, and great instructions on the Dont’ Call me Betsy site. I went with the traditional block layout but no matter what layout you use, it is an easy block that is made up of three units.

1. A single fabric square… perfect for highlighting the wonderful fussy cut horses …

2. A block made up of a rectangle of your chosen neutral (for me it was Kona Snow) and a rectangle of your coloured fabric. This was a great opportunity for me to chain piece, something I do not often get to do…

3. A square in square block, that is paper pieced, but can be done traditionally as well. For my blocks I removed the paper from this unit before I sewed the block together (a first for me, but it worked perfectly).

These units are then laid out to make a finished 12 1/2 inch block. I must admit for my block I enlarged the block slightly to room for the horse blocks. My unfinished block is 14 1/2 inches square.

This week the weather here in Portland has been gloriously hot and I have not got as much of this quilt done as I would have liked. I have three blocks completed…

and…

and as the design wall shows, a number in process.

I am determined today not to be distracted by the sun…or the cat… of the World Cup. AUGH!

7Jul2014

Okay I may have a star addiction…

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

Another Paper Piecing Monday and it is another star. I may need an intervention…but not quite yet.

This block, like last weeks, is using the #opgivewarmth June colour palette that Sarah at www.nohatsinhouse.com set. It is also another great pattern from Don’t Call me Betsy’s Lucky Star BOM (this is from August 2013).

It is pretty easy with just 48 pieces, none of which are too tricky or small.

I am now eagerly awaiting Sarah’s July colour palette, but in the meantime I have paper to rip off these….

3Jul2014

Wonky Pinwheel blocks PMQG style

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

This week we had another Portland Modern Quilt Guild Charity Sew day…and this time I had everyone making wonky pinwheels…loud, wonky, scrappy, fun pinwheels…

We started with a stack of Riley Blake solid grey squares and a huge pile of orange, yellow and red scraps. You may be having a feeling of deja vu because a couple of months ago I made a version of these blocks for Do.Good.Stitches.

Both these blocks used the fabulous tutorial from Greenleaf Goods but for the Charity Sew Day I went with 5 inch base block rather than 4 inch. After a day of sewing, our small but productive team had 30 pinwheel blocks, each measuring 9 1/2 inches, done and dusted.

I then took them all home and sewed them together to make this…

So many fun fabrics were used… all warm and bright. This is such a fabulous quilt to make if you want to use those piles of scraps you have accumulated…

Our finished quilt measures 45 inches x 54 inches and will now head out to be quilted and bound before heading to our Charity for this quarter, Raphael House.