A Wonky Tree Forest…and tutorial

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

A few weeks ago I forced everyone at the PMQG Charity Sew day to make wonky trees. We had a large amount of green, brown and cream fabrics donated to the Guild and as soon as I saw the fabric I knew that we MUST make trees.

There were only two rules…. the finished block had to be 8 1/2 inches square and it had have a tree in it. What follows is the basic instructions I gave at the start of the day…

Wonky Tree Block Instructions:

Step One…. grab all your green scraps…and some of your brown scraps and either some white/cream solid or a collection of cream scraps.

Step Two... sew a selection of your scraps together to make a rectangle of green goodness… this is going to be your tree top so make it as big or as small as you want you tree to be.

Step Three… trim said rectangle to your desired shape. For some of our trees we used a triangle ruler…

and for others we just made wonky oval shapes by trimming the corners of our rectangle and adding some corner background fabric….

Step Four…. add pieces of your background fabric around your tree top to make the it square and trim the bottom of your tree top so that it is straight…

Note: You do not have to worry too much about making sure that the “sky” (background fabric) around the tree is as big as your finished block size as you have the ability to add a border to the block as needed. With the smaller trees we made the tree block up and then sashed the block out to the 8 1/2 inch square finished size (see Step Six and a half).

Step Five… Build the tree trunk by cutting a small piece of brown scrap fabric to make a suitable sized tree trunk. Remember this is wonky quilting so it can be as fat or as thin or as tall or short as you want. Sew two pieces of your background fabric to your brown strip, making sure your finished trunk piece is at least as wide as your tree top piece. Make sure that you trim the top of the tree trunk so that it is straight.

Step Six… align the trunk to your tree top and sew the two pieces together.

Step Six and a half… if you have made a small tree sash your tree block to make it the correct size.

Step Seven…. Trim your block to size, we went with 8 1/2 inch square. Note: that the tree trunk ends at the bottom of the block, with no extra background fabric at the bottom. I found that having all the trunks at the bottom of the block made the overall look of the pieced quilt cleaner and more uniformed.

And voila you have a wonky tree block….

At the end of our day of sewing we had a veritable forest of different type of trees. Everyone embraced the wonky and the freedom to do whatever took their fancy. My favorite creation of the day was the Apple Tree…

It was so much fun putting the final quilt top together, there were so many fabulous blocks to choose from and I spent a good hour or so re-arranging the forest on my design wall.

When piecing the top together I used cream scraps cut into 8 1/2 square blocks and 4 1/2 x 8/12 inch strips to space out the trees. From playing with the layout on the design wall I knew I did not want to put all the trees together in one clump. I then added a 3 inch sashing of cream scraps between each row of trees.

I am so pleased with how this top turned out. There is a sense of fun and silliness to the trees…everyone did such a stellar job and no two trees are alike.

Now our forest is being handed off to one of the Guild’s talented longarmers for quilting. I can not wait to see how they handle this one.

13Jun2014

Another quilt top done…

Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilt patterns by wombatquilts

If you follow me on Pintrest you will know that I have been obsessed this past week with finishing my orange and brown quilt top. I got a bee in my bonnet and could not let it go, even though I had other pressing quilts with deadlines.

The quilt started life some months ago as this simple block – you can find the free paper piecing pattern link on my original post. So over the last week I have feverishly been making blocks….sew, iron, trim repeat.

With scrap quilting there is not a lot of opportunities to chain piece usually but with this project I found myself chain piecing a bit. First I chain pieced an orange block to a brown block and then I match up those units and chain pieced the blocks together. It worked wonderfully well and I used so much less thread. Eventually it all came together to make this…

I love the meta pattern this block creates…and I extra love the scrappy feel to the quilt. The splashes of white and the variation in the tones of both the orange and brown make the top really sing.

The paper pattern makes for pretty accurate piecing so that there is a lovely crispness to the points and joins.

Now all I have to do is rip the paper off, baste, quilt and bind it. I already have a backing fabric chosen and have a name picked out. This is my Jaffa quilt.. .named after a fabulous Aussie chocolate orange lolly/sweet/candy.

6Jun2014

Group effort quilts

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

First up I wanted to thank everyone for the wonderful, supportive comments that were left on my last post. After being so nervous about sharing my story, you made me so glad I opened up. Thank you.

Now back to the regularly scheduled programming….today I am thrilled to share two finished quilts that were made as part of the Portland Modern Quilt Guild Charity Sew days….

A fabulous group of ladies helped make blocks, piece and quilt these beauties which were made for local charity Camp Erin. If you are interested in making your own simple quilt like this check out my post about the block we choose for directions.

Finished PMQG chairty quilt 2

The block was so simple but really effective – we managed to get two large tops made in one day. At the same time we also managed to make sure that each top had its own unique flair.

For both these quilts we used the Guild’s left over Riley Blake Challenge fabric. We had quite a few of our Guild members share their left over pieces with us with some added touches – Rachel supplied the coolest airplane fabric, Michelle supplied the navy umbrellas and I raided my stash for some Pearl Bracelets in navy, yellow and grey.

Our two completed tops were then handed over to two of the Guild’s fabulous longarmers, Dawn and Jolene, who set to work weaving their magic.

For the backing we used some of the bigger pieces from the Riley Blake stash and I then add some scrappy binding for the finishing touch.

We now have two fabulous teen boys quilts done and ready to add to our growing collection of quilts for Camp Erin.

16May2014

A quick and simple finish for Friday

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

Yesterday I dropped off some quilts to Project Linus, including my finish for the week, a simple patchwork quilt…

A few weeks ago our local chapter put a call out for baby quilts the same day I bought a half yard of the most darling print from Michael Miller’s “Wee Wanders” range.

Using this print as inspiration, I pulled some supporting fabrics in blue, green and aqua, cut some 5 inch squares and went to work.

I of course thru in some of my trusty favorites – can you spot the Mirrorball and the Pearl Bracelets?

I went with simple straight line quilting in a diagonal grid. Nothing fancy but I like the detail it brings to the simple squares.

The backing is a single piece of fabric from my stash… that is one of the joys of a baby quilt, you can usually just pull a yard or so from your stash and you are good – no extra piecing needed. The final touch was simple electric blue binding.

The quilt was delivered yesterday to Project Linus for processing. It will then be sent out into the world to do some good.

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.