Simple quilts – an ongoing work in progress

Posted in Other fun stuff by wombatquilts

Any of you that have been following my blog for a little while or anyone who has plowed through my site will know that I am pretty prolific in my quilt creation. I am constantly trying new patterns or new colour combinations. I make a lot of quilts. In the last 6 months or so I have got into the habit of cutting 3 inch squares from any of the scraps left over from my current project.

As I am cutting fabric for a new quilt, I will make sure that any scraps that are big enough get cut into a 3 x 3 inch square and put into a shoe box set aside for them. It has become a habit that means my scrap pile is a little more manageable and I have a ready supply of 3 inch squares for projects.

What can you do with a pile of 3 inch squares you may be asking… so far I have made:

1. Granny Square blocks

2. Doll quilts… that are currently in need of quilting!

3. Graduating colour quilts – Sunburnt country is made up of 3 inch squares

4. Paper bag quilts – this quilt top is being made with a bag of white scraps and bag of pastel scraps. I chain pieced white and pastel squares together, then sewed them into strings of 14 blocks long. When finished this will be a very easy, but cute baby quilt.

I have used the same paper bag process to make a number of fun quilts including my niece Zoe’s quilt.

Up next I really want to make a scrap vomit quilt with all my 3 inch squares. A total random hodge podge of fabrics sewn together to make something ugly beautiful. Sounds like fun!

16Oct2013

Some Appleville fun

Posted in WIP Wednesday by wombatquilts

This week I found in my stash a yard of fabric I bought a year or so ago because I fell in love the artwork on it. It from Suzy Ultman’s “Appleville” range for Robert Kaufman.

I often buy fun printed fabric because I love it, but do not really know what I am going to do with it. I struggled a lot with this fabric in particular because it is blocks of different prints, not an overall pattern. I know I could have cheated and just used it as part of a backing fabric, but that would not show the fun prints off to their best advantage.

So this week to challenge myself, I pulled the fabric out of my stash, determined to make a quilt out of it. I cut the individual printed sections of the fabric out and went to work.

I grabbed some Kona white, some graphic bright prints and started playing.

As I finish a block it goes up on the design wall with the others.

Slowly but surely a quilt top is starting to emerge.

The blocks are all different shapes and sizes so the layout will be free form.

And there will be a lot of white used as the background fabric.

But in the end I hope to have a fun quilt top finished, quilted and bound for Friday.

Wish me luck…

4Oct2013

A solid finish

Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

I committed this week to try to finish a quilt a week for October… and I mean baste, quilt and bind. I want to try to get as many quilts finished and delivered to Project Linus before the holidays. A crazy goal I know, but I have to give it a go.

To start this slightly mad schedule I decided to make another trip around quilt. I love these quilts, they are so easy and fun to make. This one is a little different for me can you tell how?

Those of you who know my work will note a distinct lack of pattern on the fabric. Yep I made a completely solid quilt. I have only made one of these before and it was a disaster, luckily this one came out much much better.

My Trip Along started life as a jelly roll, that has been sitting in my stash for quite a while….

I love the colours of the roll, but did not know what to do with it until I had to make some Bee trip around blocks recently. Those blocks inspired me to make another Trip Around quilt and so the fun started. I managed to get 16 x 12 inch blocks out the one jelly roll (with a little finagling to get the last block complete).

With the first Trip Around quilt I did I went scrappy, bright and used the traditional block layout but with this quilt I went with a wave layout.

My hand is still not allowing me to do any quilting other than straight lines, but luckily I think it works perfectly with this quilt top. I quilted diagonally across the top using a nice Sulky thread to add some shine to the stitches, my way of compensating for the lack of print on the fabric.

To finish it all off I had to find a piece of backing fabric that would compliment and offset the solid fabric front. I was thrilled to find in my stash this AMAZING Alexander Henry print.

Here is a close up detail on the fabulous jungle print. It really is the most perfect fabric for this quilt.

All that was left was to label and machine bind the quilt. Staying true to the front of the quilt I went with a Kona solid binding in dusty purple.

So one quilt down for this month a few more to go…

Fine print: I do reserve the right to subtly or not so subtly pull out of my “one quilt a week” schedule. I also reserve the right to call myself crazy for setting such a schedule.

27Sep2013

Lost Geese Quilt top finished

Posted in Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

This week I managed to get my “Shell logo” inspired flying geese quilt top finished. By the time I had finished laying out this quilt top it had earned the name “Lost Geese”, can you guess why?

Yep is it a little crazy… but kind of fun. Lots of novelty fabric and fun stuff to make the eyes really explore the madness.

I had a lot of fun making the “geese” go all over the place. I love the lack of pattern or rhythm to the piecing (though it frustrated my husband a little). Too really throw things into disarray I added a smattering of yellow triangles on a red background. Chaos rules!

I paper pieced these blocks as I love to have sharp clear triangles in my flying geese and paper piecing is the only way I personally can get that precision. My original post has a paper piecing pattern you can grab if you are interested in trying some geese.

This top has been added to the pile that need basting. I am going to see if I can convince my hubby to help me again this weekend to baste a quilt or two.

20Sep2013

I love a sunburnt country…

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

I have finally finished my “Sunburnt Country” baby quilt… it definitely took me longer than I had planned but I think it was worth the wait.

This quilt was a collaboration with a family friend, who commissioned me to make a modern bright baby quilt that had a hint of Australia in it. You can find my original post about this project here.

The graduated colours are inspired by the Aussie sun (bright, hot, & at times unforgiving) and because it is a baby quilt there are lots of little novelty bits and pieces to explore.

And…

My original quilting plan was to do a circles radiating from the yellow center of the quilt. Unfortunately my left thumb has not been co-operating, so I had to resort to drastic measures, which included getting my darling husband to baste this quilt.

The quilt is backed with a fabulous Australian print I picked up when I was home in March.

Snuggle Pot and Cuddle Pie on gum leaves, perfectly Australian.

To finish the whole thing off I bound the quilt with a navy sketch fabric and a Wombat Quilts tag.

This little piece of Australia is headed to the Mid-West to keep a Aussie/American baby warm and hopefully remind her that her Grandmother in Australia loves her.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!