Yep more Starry Nights

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I had struggled to find some smaller blocks for my Starry Night quilt, so I have been working on designing some smaller blocks for my quilt. This week’s block is a simple 8 inch block…

You can find the pattern I made here…WQ Starry Night Block 1. It is a simple 40 piece block with no really small pieces (which is the problem I found with shrinking a lot of the more complex patterns).

As a side…when I ran my test block I did not number the pattern, but I promise the attached pattern sheet has numbered pieces…promise.

6Dec2013

Baby it’s cold outside…

Posted in Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

I woke up this morning to find that Portland is covered in a lovely layer of snow. This does not happen often, and as an Aussie it still absolutely delights me. I was jumping round the house opening all the curtains and gleefully claiming “ohhh it is so pretty”. Then I realised I needed to photograph my quilt this morning. Glee gone.

As much as I love snow I am not a huge fan of being cold. But I rugged up, 4 layers deep, put on some gloves and bravely ventured out to photography my just finished quilt top.

This was the perfect quilt to photograph in the snow, and I have decided to call the quilt “Icicles”…it seemed like a fitting title.

This quilt is a Do.good.stitches project. I recently joined the “Hope Circle” and when it was my turn to set the block I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

We used Julie at 627Handworks “Icky Thump” block – one of the easiest and most effective paper piecing patterns EVER. You can find the free pattern here and my original post here.I love how much variety there is in this quilt. If I had made all the blocks myself the quilt top would not be this interesting – I would have stuck with light greys and turquoises. The wonderful ladies of my quilt circle instead provided me with such wonderful blocks, such variation in greys that the quilt really sings. I can not wait to get the back made and the quilt finished.

25Nov2013

Starry Nights grow – Paper Piecing Monday

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

This week I decided to play a little with my Starry Night blocks, that is put them up on the design wall and see how it was all coming together. But before I started “playing” I made this block….

Yes, another pattern from Quilting on the Square’s free Bonus Compass blocks… this time I went with their twinkle pattern. A lovely little pattern taking just 32 pieces.

As I started pinning the blocks up on my design wall I quickly realised I needed some more variety in sizes for my stars… so just for fun I made this “little” variation on my twinkle block.

This mini twinkle star uses Quilters Cache’s free eight pointed star pattern. I printed this pattern out at a smaller size than the pattern dictates and as I am not worried about being too accurate with the star sizes I let my printer do the re-sizing calculations.

When I was finished with both these blocks, I tacked them up on my wall…. now this is really just a very very rough work in progress, just so I could see how the blocks looked together and so I could work out what I needed to be doing with my patterns going forward.

I have a way to go… but I think it is coming together nicely. I have worked out that I want more variety in my stars and more variety in my sizes.

22Nov2013

Tricky Triangles finally finished

Posted in Finished Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

I am very very very pleased to say that my pink and green triangle quilt is finally all done. I have procrastinated with this quilt in new and exciting ways over the last 6+ months… but she is now completed and I can move on with the rest of my life.

I must admit, in the spirit of full disclosure, that I had planned for this quilt to be bigger than what she ended up as, but I got to the point where I had had enough and just went with the blocks I had made. Her finished dimensions are 45 inches x 50 inches which is a smallish kids quilt.

I first posted this block way back in April… I had been given a small scrap pile of olive green fabric and wanted to do something with it. Hot pink fabric was chosen to go with the olive and a triangle paper pieced pattern from the “Modern Blocks” book was chosen. I was so optimistic with that first post I titled it “Triangle Love”.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, when I decided to bite the bullet and finish this sucker… but now I was referring to it as “Triangle Trauma“. Oh what a difference time makes….

Now all is said and done I am really happy with how this quilt turned out…but will not be jumping into another triangle quilt for a while! For the backing of the quilt I used a piece of Densye Schmidt which worked perfectly with the quilt top.

For the quilting I selected a random triangle, quilted around it and then radiated the quilting out from there. It is straight line quilting but with a twist. I went with pink thread of course, because you can never get enough pink in my opinion!

I nearly went with pink binding but opted for a Kona olive green instead – I think it made the pink pop a little more.

So now that I have finished a quilt, I am now, under Ashley’s mum’s rules, allowed to start another one. I have a pattern picked out and fabric pulled… stay tuned.

Quilt Details:

Technique: Modern scrap

Block: Paper pieced triangle pattern from “Modern Blocks”

Finished size: 45″ x 50″

18Nov2013

More Starry Nights – Paper Piecing Monday

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

Okay I am getting a little obsessive over these blocks…I am just loving how they are turning out and can not wait to start playing with them on my design wall. This week I add another fun one to the collection.

This is another pattern from Quilting on the Squares free Bonus Star collection. The pattern is called Diamond in the Rough and comes in at a measly 48 pieces.