Paper Piecing Monday the crazy edition…

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

Summer has well and truly arrived in Portland and I have been making the most of the sunshine… and not posting as much as I usually do. Sorry about that.

This of course does not mean I have not been quilting… I have still been sewing away, just a little more sporadically than usual. For the last week or so the only thing that has been up on my design wall has been my Starry Night quilt.

As you can see the jigsaw is slowly coming together. I have finished with the star blocks and I am now just making sky. Random weird bits of sky.

This week I went through my EQ7 quilting program and found a pile of paper pieced patterns and printed them out (my sky pieces are currently all 6 inch square or 3 x 6 inches). With EQ I have been able to find a pattern I think is interesting and print it out at both sizes.

Now as stand alone blocks they look a little weird but once you add them to the quilt they just blend into the background in weird and wonderful ways….

No matter how hard I tried to hide it you have probably realised by now that I did not have a grand plan when I started making these blocks, and that I am really making it up as I go along. The blocks are not being placed in any sort of grid and I am just going with the flow, piecing bits and pieces together and seeing what works.

It is a crazy way to work…but really fun. If you are interested in exploring the individual star blocks I have used, you can find links to them under the “Paper Piecing Monday” tab and/or under the “Free Paper Piecing Patterns” tab.

9Jul2014

Wee Wanders WIP Wednesday

Posted in WIP Wednesday by wombatquilts

This week I have been playing with a selection of the Wee Wander’s fabric range by Michael Miller. I love this fabric and have had a blast playing this week.

Using the fabric for inspiration I pulled supporting fabric from my stash and ended up with this lovely bundle.

As soon as I bought the Wee Wanders, I knew what block I wanted to use – the Rolling Stone Block which dates back to the late 19th century…

I found this block, and great instructions on the Dont’ Call me Betsy site. I went with the traditional block layout but no matter what layout you use, it is an easy block that is made up of three units.

1. A single fabric square… perfect for highlighting the wonderful fussy cut horses …

2. A block made up of a rectangle of your chosen neutral (for me it was Kona Snow) and a rectangle of your coloured fabric. This was a great opportunity for me to chain piece, something I do not often get to do…

3. A square in square block, that is paper pieced, but can be done traditionally as well. For my blocks I removed the paper from this unit before I sewed the block together (a first for me, but it worked perfectly).

These units are then laid out to make a finished 12 1/2 inch block. I must admit for my block I enlarged the block slightly to room for the horse blocks. My unfinished block is 14 1/2 inches square.

This week the weather here in Portland has been gloriously hot and I have not got as much of this quilt done as I would have liked. I have three blocks completed…

and…

and as the design wall shows, a number in process.

I am determined today not to be distracted by the sun…or the cat… of the World Cup. AUGH!

27Jun2014

Look what I have finally got done…

Posted in Finished Quilts, Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

… yes I finally got my red and aqua stars into a presentable form… a finished quilt top….I can hear the gasps of surprise from here…

These stars were the product of my first Paper Piecing Monday adventures. I loved putting them together each week, challenging myself to make some complex and amazing stars.

Some of the stars were free patterns from Quilting on the Square (you can find the links to the specific patterns under my Free Paper Piecing Patterns tabs) and others were from Carol Doak’s book 50 Fabulous Paper Pieced Stars.

So in the end I had 20 amazing 12 inch paper pieced stars and no real plan what to do with them. After an online survey last year, it was decided that navy sashing did the best job of showing off each and every star to its best, so a plan was hatched. Fast forward a few months (possibly more) and after auditioning a few navy fabrics and ended up using Robert Kaufman’s Quilters Linen in navy. It was perfect the job.

So now all that is left is to remove the paper… which will be quite a task as some of these suckers are really complex…

Then it is off to a long armer for quilting. At no point did I contemplate ruining this gorgeous quilt top with my quilting. It deserves the best…plus the finished quilt is going to my Mum so I want it to be amazing.

2Jun2014

Revisiting Starry Night

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

Last week’s paper piecing blocks, along with some of your comments, reminded me that I needed to finish my Starry Night quilt top up. So this week I am determined to make some good headway on it…. starting with a couple of new 6 inch blocks…

This little star is another of Don’t Call Me Betsy’s “Lucky Star” blocks from last years BOM series. It was fun using my teeny tiny bits of scraps to make this pretty.

I did make a small adjustment because of the size of the block, and used a larger scrap for the final blue sky piece, opting not to do a little piece in the corner. I also realised making these blocks that I needed to use smaller scale prints to get that scrappy contrast.

With my second star I managed to squeak some Pearl Bracelets in, but I had to position the scrap just right so the dots showed up. This block is a 6 inch star that I found on my EQ7 program – it has some neat paper pieced blocks. Julie at 627 Handworks’ Global Concept block is very similar to my tiny block, but bigger. You can find her free paper piecing pattern here.

I think one or two more blocks and I will be ready to start putting this top together. I am going to work this week at how I want to handle the negative space, playing with some scrappy navy/blue blocks as filler. I will share the results next week.

28May2014

The beauty of the Altantic Sea

Posted in Colour Play, WIP Wednesday by wombatquilts

This week I have been working hard to get my Atlantic Sea Quilt top done. This quilt started life many months ago as this block…

After making of few of these blocks I put them together to see what the pattern would look like and found that there was a beautiful meta pattern (as the hubby would say) which was giving the quilt a real sense of movement.

The pattern I am using is a free paper piecing pattern from Quilters Cache. You can find a link to the pattern under my “free paper piecing pattern” tab or on the original post.

Fast forward a month or four and I have made lots and lots of blocks. This week I pinned what I had made up on the design wall and Instragramed the results.

I liked how it was coming together but I thought it needed a little something. I could go with a coloured binding but I did not think that it would be enough… so this week I whipped up this block.

And then added it to the quilt work in progress….

All of a sudden the quilt came alive. I love this little splash… I think it helps the eye identify the pattern easier and makes the top sing…

Now I just have to sew the last couple of rows together, remove all the paper from the back and the top will be done. I am so excited by this piece of scrap magic. I had a blast raiding my scrap bin for this baby!