Colour Play – Brown

Posted in Scrap quilts, WIP Wednesday by wombatquilts

Last weekend, while my husband was away on a “dude’s weekend” I took the opportunity to clean up my stash a little. Needless to say there was fabric from one end of the house to the other… it looked like a fabulous colourful fabric bomb had gone off. During this process I realized I had somehow accumulated a decent size stash of brown fabric. I am still not sure how this happened as brown is definitely not a colour I use at all, ever, but now I had found it I of course had to use it.

I love a good challenge and finding good uses for brown fabric is a perfect challenge for 2014. Fired up it took me less than 5 minutes to find some inspiration in my house, and the game was on.

This inspiration, a glass vase….

became this fabric pull…

The pattern I chose was a fabulously simple free paper piecing number from Quilters Cache… the Fly Foot 2 .

Which when you do alternating colour blocks turns out like this…

These blocks when added to other blocks make this amazing plaid like pattern…

For the first time in my quilting life I have used brown as a predominate colour and I love the results. There will be more brown combinations in my future… so stay tuned.

3Feb2014

We have neon…we have pink…

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

What more could you want?

This paper piecing Monday sees me full embracing the Neon crazy. In my defense I did not start this but I am definitely going to finish it. This week I worked out exactly what direction I wanted to take with this quilt and so designed this block with my new “cunning plan” in mind.

You see this quilt was inspired by two “orphan” blocks that I inherited when I took over my role at Portland Modern Quilt Guild. I hate to see fabulous blocks go to waste, and love the challenge of finding a way to use them. I warn you I inherited a lot of weird and wonderful things and you will see more of them over the next 12 months.

The two blocks I started with were 11 inch neon pink and grey. I do not know who made them, but they are fabulous. My plan is to border the grey blocks with 1 inch of white sashing and make a checker board style quilt with alternating 11 inch grey blocks and white border blocks.

So for this week’s block I designed a snowball style block, with a larger than usual white border. I am loving this block and can not wait to make it in my traditional scrappy style. The block is a fun 40 pieces and was really simple to whip up. The 12 inch pattern can be found here…WQ Neon Block 2.

I also wanted to thank everyone for their kind comments about my “magazine debut”. I quilt because I love (in a crazy insane way) but I never thought other people would enjoy what I made as much as they have. I continue to be surprised by the response my quilts get, touched by the comments people leave and grateful for the friendships I am making.

Thank you.

31Jan2014

Taking stock of the month

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

January has been a crazy month for me and the website. The month has flown by and I feel I have achieved next to nothing on my “To Do” list… except I did get my mandatory two charity quilts done this week.

Both of my charity quilts for January are small baby quilts, but they count right? First up is a crazy improv quilt that I had started ages ago, got bored with and then just put aside. This week it became a loud baby quilt…

I do not know what I was thinking when I started this top, but when I found the perfect child friendly backing fabric I knew it had to be finished up and handed on. I also saw the quilt as a good opportunity to practice my free motion quilting. I went with some weird square quilt pattern which started as one technique and ended as another.

The quilting is far from good but the more I do the better I will get right? Please tell me it will get better!

The other quilt I finished up this week for Project Linus is a simple pastel patchwork that used a selection of my 3 inch squares.

I used both pastel scraps and tone on tone white scraps with simple piecing and simple quilting and enough novelty prints thrown in to keep a kids interest.

Both of these quilts were backed with whole cloth and machine bound. I must admit expediency rather creativity was the driving force behind both these quilts. They will go out into the world and do some good and hopefully their new owners will not look too closely at the technique but instead appreciate the thought behind them.

I wanted to finish up my last post of January with some blog news that some of you may or may not know. I have struggled all month with how to share this news without it seeming like I am blowing my own horn. I could not come up with a good solution so I am just going to do it….

In the first few weeks of January I had two wonderful shout outs for my quilts and quilting. First the amazing Sew Mama Sew included me in their wonderful “31 Inspiring Quilters” Series. I was a so thrilled to be selected and have had a wonderful time checking out the amazing talent that they have highlighted this month. If you are looking for inspiration check out this series.

Just a few days after my Sew Mama Sew post the latest edition of “Down Under Quilts” hit the newsstands in Australia. Somewhere in the middle of the magazine is this..

There in glossy print is three pages of my quilts and my words. It is kind of surreal. I have never been in print before, well not for my quilting anyway.

So if January is anything to go by, 2014 is going to be an infinitely better year than 2013, which to be honest is not hard..2013 kicked my butt badly.

29Jan2014

A colour dilema…

Posted in WIP Wednesday by wombatquilts

A couple of days ago I realized that January was slowly slipping away and I had not managed to tick any projects off my 2014 To Do List. Drastic action was needed so I pulled out my Tula Pink blocks and got to work. I made the final couple of blocks, put them up on the design wall and stared at them for a day (very constructive use of time I hear you say).

I blame my husband for the delay, actually I blame him for a lot of things, but this was really his fault. You see last year when I started this project he did this…

It made me laugh at the time but when it came time to put the top together using just pink blocks something seemed to be missing. The layout with the Tardis was fun but it took away from the Tula Pink feel of the quilt. I then made this…

I thought a blue Tula Block would work but it just did not seem to have the same impact as a Tardis. In the end I have chosen to go with all pink blocks. I have added 1 1/2 inch sashing around the blocks and I am slowly sewing it together.

I have two more rows to go and before the top is all pieced…

As I add each row I keep thinking “should I add the blue”. I am constantly second guessing my decision.

I am loving the pink blocks together but there is something missing. AUGH… this is driving me crazy. What would you do?

27Jan2014

Another Neon Monday

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

This week I was just not able to make myself do another blue block… so to mix things up I thought I would make another Neon block. I recently inherited some Michael Miller Neon scraps and a couple of unused Neon blocks and thought I would try to make a neon quilt for the PMQG charity drive. So here is my first contribution to the quilt…

This is pattern is not too complex but I like how the star seems to have a frame. I did manage this week to get all my points to align and I really learnt from last weeks palava, which means the pattern is ready for use. You can find it here…WQ Neon Star block 1.