Foxy Paper Piecing Monday

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

Okay I could not help myself…I just had to do it…

I decided that my low volume quilt needed a block from No Hat’s In the House fabulous Forest quilt, as a not too subtle nod to the amazing quilt that inspired my low volume sampler. So I bit the bullet and headed over to the Forest QAL and picked one of their FREE paper piecing blocks.

These patterns are crazy good but complex. How complex I hear you ask… well my fox took four colours…

cut into 99 scraps of fabric…

sewn onto 27 separate pattern pieces…

that were then sewing into three sections…

These sections were then sewn together to make one incredible block.

I was so thrilled with how this block turned out and I kept shoving it in my husbands face saying “look how fabulous this is”… “isn’t this block incredible”… “have you ever seen anything so amazing”. He was not as excited as I had hoped about the whole thing. Actually his response was decidedly underwhelming. Going to have to get him to work on that.

He just keeps saying “what does the fox say“….

2Oct2013

Adventure Time wip Wednesday

Posted in Scrap quilts, WIP Wednesday by wombatquilts

After several “low volume” projects recently I wanted to do something different, loud, bright. I found inspiration in the pages of my husband’s Adventure Time comic for my new block. If you know Adventure Time at all you will see the strong influence of Princess Bubblegum in this block. She regularly pops up in Jake & Finn’s crazy adventures. Now if you do not know Adventure Time, this is Princess Bubblegum.

After pulling a stash of bubblegum pink fabric and aqua/blue fabric, I found a pattern I liked and started cutting. The end result is this…

With this block I did not let the pattern’s unpleasant name ( “turkey giblets”) turn me off. You can find the paper piecing pattern I used at Quilters Cache. It is a really easy pattern to make and is made up of two triangle blocks that are joined to make the building block of the quilt.

I can not wait to see how this quilt top comes together. I think it is going to be a quilt like my “Sun & Sea” quilt where the final overall quilt pattern looks so different from the individual block pattern.

30Sep2013

Paper Piecing Monday Scapbeelicious style

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

This week’s paper piecing Monday is a little different. I recently joined my first quilting Bees – one of them is a do.Good.Stitches circle and the other is a fabulous collection of fellow bloggers who set up “Scrap-bee-licious”. For both Bee’s I was “queen” this month, which means I am choosing the pattern/colour scheme for my fellow quilters.

The Scrap-bee-licious Bee caused me the most consternation as this quilt is not going to charity, but will be staying with me. I have only kept one quilt so far in my quilting history, so I had to think long and hard about what I really wanted. So after much umming and ahhing, hair pulling and mind changing I settled on…

… low volume. A couple of weeks ago Sarah at No Hats in the House posted photos of one of the most amazing quilts I have ever seen. Her “Once Upon a Forest” quilt took my breath away. Inspired the beauty of this quilt, I have asked my fellow Bee members to make me a scrappy low volume paper pieced block or two.

I have not selected a specific pattern to be followed but have asked them to make me any 12 inch paper pieced block they want. There are so many fabulous free paper piecing patterns on-line, including this one (called Circle of Geese) from Pieced by Numbers or Julie at 627handwork’s Block Rockn’ blocks or Quilting on the Squares Compass Collection.

As I discovered with this block there is a method to getting contrast and detail when you are working with low volume. When I pulled fabric for this block I pulled two different type of low volume from my stash:

1. Pastel, soft solid fabrics.

2. Predominantly white fabrics

The importance of the contrast these two different low volume fabric selections give you was highlighted to me when I made the mistake of using two pieces of solid light grey in the background. In the resulting block…

–

..you can see how the grey pearl bracelet in particular distracts/hinders/muddies the circle of geese pattern. A little unpicking and some re-sewing later and the block was just what I wanted. I am now excited to try a paper pieced star or two using these colours and I can not wait to see what my fellow Bee members come up with. This is going to be fun.

23Sep2013

Pinwheel Paper Piecing Monday

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

The pastel pin wheel fun continues this week with the latest Paper Piecing Block.

This quilt is going to scream ‘pin wheel’ by the time I have finished. I found some more fun patterns this weekend and I am excited to get some more blocks done so I can put up a wip photo for you.

This is one of the easier patterns taking only 32 pieces to complete. The blocks pattern was the “test” pattern for Don’t Call Me Betsy’s “Lucky Star Block” series I made this block before – it was part of my Paper Piecing Monday Boston Edition. One pattern, two very different blocks, which what I love about these patterns… lots of options.

I am now patiently awaiting the October block. I love getting a new pattern in my email every month, a fun little present for me to play with.

18Sep2013

Zakka Flowers wip

Posted in WIP Wednesday by wombatquilts

Last week, while I was cleaning up our very messy office/quilt fabric storage room I came across my large stash of Denyse Schmidt fabric. I have been hording Denyse’s fabric for a while, including the DS Quilts lines. I have not really used the fabric other than in bits and pieces in scrap quilts, but this week all that has changed.

All this week I have been making Denyse Schmidt Zakka flowers. I found this fabulous pattern in the book “Patchwork Please” and it just screamed to be made in my DS stash. So I have been making flowers all week… lots and lots of flowers.

During this process I have discovered:

1. I did not buy enough Flea Market Fancy – it is such a great line.

2. I did not start building my stash soon enough because some of the earlier lines are FABULOUS and missing from my collection – early Flea Market, Katie Jump Rope and Hope Valley in particular.

3. You must concentrate when paper piecing and not be distracted by your husband or you end up doing this…

So here is what a weeks worth of of Zakka flowers looks like…

And there are more to do. I have become a little obsessed with these beauties and have at least 5 more cut and ready to go. This pattern is proving to be the perfect showcase for my DS fabric stash.