Tula Pink Friday

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

This week I managed to get my Tula Pink quilt basted, quilted and bound. Yipee. This quilt has been a work in process since May last year…I would do a few blocks here and there when the mood took me, till I had 30 blocks ready to go.

I actually got the quilt top finished during the snow storm a few weeks ago but it took me another couple of weeks to get her basted and then quilted. I am beginning to notice that I am not as fast to baste and quilt as I am to piece. Okay I admit it I love to piece quilt tops…quilt them, not so much. Anyway I soldiered through and this was the result….

I love the blocks and that Tula Pink City Sampler blocks are a great project to dip in and out of.

Some of the blocks are really simple and easy, others a little more complex. I did not do some of the crazier blocks in the book…I am leaving those to the next quilt…

When it came time to quilt my top up I decided to got with a light grey thread for quilting. In hindsight I maybe should have stuck with white as the quilting is really highlighted which creates two issues for me…

1. It distracts from the pretty blocks I think…and

2. It highlights that my quilting may not be completely straight.

It was a huge learning experience for me and I think the quilt still looks cute, despite my missteps. It is backed with some lovely Lotta Jansdotter fabric from her “Echo” line.

And hand bound with two different Kona cotton pinks… scraps I had left over from another project.

I am definitely making a blue version of this quilt so I can do more blocks from the book and so I can slip in the Tardis block. I will take what I learnt from this quilt and apply it wisely.

26Feb2014

Colour Play – Grey

Posted in Colour Play, Quilt patterns by wombatquilts

The last week or so I have been playing with a different kind of colour combination…one that really has not got a lot of “colour” in it. My inspiration was a very old photo that hangs on our living room wall…

(Please note..I can neither confirm or deny that I am in this photo).

Anyway I have always loved black and white photographs, which really are more grey and white than black and white, and thought why not play with greys in a quilt. The end result was this block…

I used another fabulous free paper piecing pattern from Quilters Cache called Atlantic Sea. The block pieces look rather strange and a pattern is not immediately obvious.

But when you put more and more of the blocks together you get this wild, slightly mesmerizing pattern.

I think as this quilts grows more and more patterns and shapes will become visible. It is really a little trippy but cool.

24Feb2014

Paper Piecing Monday EPP Style

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

It is hexagon central here at Wombat Quilts. I have just started another hexagon quilt, this time a miniature quilt, as part of the Michael Miller “Glitz” Challenge our Modern Guild is doing. We were given 8 fat eighths of the fabulously Art Deco looking “Glitz” fabric line…

and I just had to make those dots into hexagons…

I have also been slowing plugging away on my bright daisy hexagon quilt which has been a wip for over a year now…

But the newest hexagon addition to the family is an amazing vintage hexagon top I picked up at a local thrift store for $10.

It was a revelation for me to see the hand workings on this top. It is stitched in most places using a simple running stitch to keep the hexagons in place…

and in a couple of places there is little more stitching, mainly where the seams are a little smaller…

This quilt top was found shoved in a basket with other fabrics… it has not been treated too well, I would say, recently but it has held up beautifully. There is only one place where I will have to do a little repair. On the other hand I have been stitching the bejebus out of my hexagons…

Lots and lots and lots of little stitches because I was scared it would not hold together. Having seen the work on my beautiful vintage hexagon, I am thinking of taking my stitch count down a little.

If you are interested in learning more about English paper piecing or want some hexagon templates check out my post from last year which has tips and links galore..

To finish off I thought I would share some photos of the amazing fabrics on my “new” vintage quilt top. Here are some my favorites…

21Feb2014

Simple, easy, quick and fun

Posted in Quilts by wombatquilts

Monday night my husband decided to abandon me for some fun and games with some of his friends. I was a little excited to have the night to myself and decided that I wanted to try to finish a quilt top in a night. I found the perfect fabric for my plan, some 1/2 yard cuts of three prints from Michael Miller’s “Les Monsieur” I bought a couple of months ago.

Using this fabulous print from the collection as my focus, I pulled supporting green and blue fabrics, tone on tone white and some mustaches from my stash and got to work.

I cut strips from my stash fabric and fussy cut the Les Monsieur fabric and hours later I had this…

It was a fun and somewhat liberating experience making this quilt. Once I knew my colour scheme and had some of the main prints fussy cut it was an easy process of putting blocks together. Other than trimming your blocks to size (I used my 9 1/2 inch square ruler) you do not have to worry too much about precise measuring.

The fussy cut centers are different sizes, as are the borders surrounding them.

I did make sure there was a good balance of blues and greens in the blocks in the top…

…as well as some dark tones to make things pop – I used a dark blue print and a nice Kona brown solid for this purpose.

I also made sure that there was plenty of white bordered blocks to help the contrast. And voila… a quilt 45 inch square quilt top made in a night!

As it is Friday I am linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday and Forth Worth Fabric’s Fabric Frenzy Friday.

19Feb2014

Colour Play Girly Style

Posted in Colour Play by wombatquilts

This week I went totally girly with my colour play. I love pink and love using pink…

Example One…

Example Two…

Example Three…

Example Four…

I could go on but I think you get the picture… so this weeks challenge was to try a new pink combination, one that I was a little different from my norm. The end result was this totally girly fabric pull…