Wonky Kites Quilt

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

A couple of weeks ago a group of PMQG members met for our monthly Charity Sew Day. These get togethers are always good fun and this one was no exception. For July I had chosen a wonky kite block for us to make… another easy scrap busters…

This quilt is so ridiculously simple. We started with a 5 inch square of our background solid, Kona Shadow and then sewed a green/blue scrap on opposite corners.

You then trim the block to 5 inches….

Then sew two block together, making sure the triangle pieces meet, but not worrying at all about matching the seams (this is the wonky way). Repeat process and then sew the two halves together to make the kite centered block…

What you end up with is a really fun, random block…

Sew them all together and you end up with a huge quilt top!

Our charity for this month has requested Twin size quilts, no mean feat at the best of times (and impossible for me to photograph properly).

This block was perfect for making sure we had a fun, modern quilt ready to go to a long armer, in a day.

It helped that we had a great team working to make blocks….

And of course the final check and block layout approval was provided by the cat!

18Apr2014

Oh the plans I had…

Posted in Quilts by wombatquilts

This week has been a lost week for me. I got smacked hard by the Flu and have not sewn or been near fabric since Monday..yep I have been that sick! I had so many plans for this week… so many things that needed to get finished. Oh well.

I was going to just write this blogging week off as well, but for some reason, in my Flu state, I thought it would be a good idea to share the quilt top I finished a little while ago. It is a quilt top that I was not originally going to post pictures of, as my husband had declared it the “ugliest” quilt he had ever seen. Now emboldened by an assortment of cold and flu medication here goes…

Now in defense of this top, it was made using a bunch of unloved orphan blocks from the PMQG charity drive. There are some lovely blocks in the top, but overall the colour scheme is not me.

Putting the top together I took apart some blocks, cut up others and generally took liberties. I just loved the challenge of seeing if I could make this work somehow.

In hindsight I think I would approach the task differently and use more negative space… putting in solid fabrics instead of some of the cut down blocks. Next time… and there will be a next time because there are more of these orphan blocks.

So on this Friday I say it is time for the ugly quilts to come out of the closet. Share your fuglies. Photography them. Facebook them. Instagram them. Let them have their moment in the sun.

Okay I am now going back to bed with my tissues and my Dayquil.

1Apr2014

Paper piecing Monday missing in action…

Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilt patterns by wombatquilts

This week Paper Piecing Monday was usurpered by Portland Modern Quilt Guild’s Charity Sew Day.. sorry. I have decided on a new paper pieced quilt and have designed the first block for it, but have not had a chance to test the pattern… but I promise it will be ready for next week.

In the meantime I thought I would share some of the fun of yesterday… where a group of PMQG members took over one of the class rooms at Modern Domestic for the day and made quilt tops.

We had a collection of fat quarters and fat eighths left over from the Riley Blake challenge and our challenge was to make some quick and easy quilt tops out of them. Rachel from 2nd Avenue Studios and I spearheaded this adventure and we quickly settled on a modified rail fence and three of the fabrics from the Challenge – the yellow dot, the navy check and the grey stripe.

We supplemented the Riley Blake with some other graphic prints in our colour way, all boy appropriate, as our Charity needs teen boy quilts (yes I am the one that added the Pearl Bracelets!).

The pattern is ridiculously easy and very very effective. In a nutshell we…

1. Cut a generous nine-inch strip of our chosen fabrics…

2. Cut our nine inch strips into sections of 5 inch, 3 1/2 inch and 1 1/2 inch pieces. We made sure we had a variety of each colour in ever size.

3. Selected the strips for our block making sure there was one of each colour… then using a scant 1/4 inch seam we sewed the pieces together to get our finished 9 x 9 inch block.

You can easily build in some wiggle room with this block by cutting your fabric strips from your yardage at 9 1/4 inches wide (it is a little harder with fat eights, but with the fat quarter cuts we cut 9 1/4 inches from the 21 inch width).

If you are struggling to get a scant 1/4 seam allowance you can add some wiggle room the other way, by cutting 5 1/4 inch or 3 3/4 inch pieces… and then trim the finished block as needed down to 9 x 9 inches.

And viola you have a fun, easy but striking quilt top.

Thanks to everyone’s efforts we managed to get two tops finished yesterday… in between the socializing, laughing and cake eating. Not a bad way to spend a Monday I must admit.