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.

25Jan2013

Low volume Log cabin finished

Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilt patterns, Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

Late last night, while watching fabulously trashy TV, I finally finished up my low volume log cabin quilt. I am thrilled with the end result, even though I doubted myself a few times during the process.

This is my second low volume quilt. My first one was made up of simple square blocks, this one I decided to do a log cabin block. My previous post can be found here and here. I love the log cabin block and was inspired to use this traditional pattern by Susan Beal’s wonderful book Modern Log Cabin Quilting. This pattern allowed me to really (a) raid my scraps and (b) include an amazing number of fabrics.

For this quilt I did use a paper piecing pattern and you can find a similar one here thanks to quilterscache.com. For non paper piercers Connecting Threads has a great log cabin tutorial (with videos and all) which can be found here.

My two low volume quilts have been a challenge for me. As you can tell from my other quilts I love colour and contrast and with low volume I was well and truly out of my comfort zone. What was not a challenge, this time, was the quilting. I decided to just run vertical lines down the quilt, using the block’s lines as a guide for my walking foot. It was a lot quilting/stitching (more tthan I usually do), but the end result is what makes me really love this quilt. I can not wait to see how it puckers after washing!

I used a single fabric print for the backing – a charming Kaffe Fassett floral which worked nicely withe the gentle tone of the front of the quilt. I finished the quilt with some scrappy grey binding, just the right colour to bring the whole thing together.

12Dec2012

Low Volume Log Cabin

Posted in Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

I have finally finished the top for my low volume log cabin quilt. I was inspired to make this quilt after finishing my first ever low volume quilt (see my previous low volume posts). I had squares and scraps left over that just screamed to be made into log cabin blocks.

I like the idea of the structured pattern of a log cabin with the random low volume scraps. All my other log cabins blocks have had a uniformed repeating colour pattern so when they are placed they form an overall quilt patterns. For example:

The blocks in this quilt make for a scrappy quilt with no over all pattern. I find myself looking at the fabric and not at the block pattern. I tried to use lots of different fabrics – geometrics, stripes, dots and lots of novelties. Hopefully some kid will appreciate looking at all the fun bits and pieces to be found within the quilt. Now onto quilting….

6Nov2012

Low Volume Part 2

Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

My first low volume quilt is now finished. I started this quilt a couple of weeks ago and blogged about my struggle working without bright colours here.

I opted for a simple straight line quilting, it was all that seemed to be needed for this quiet quilt.

I backed the quilt with a wonderful Alexander Henry fabric I had in my stash. I must admit I back a lot of my quilts with either Alexander Henry or Michael Miller or IKEA fabrics.

I love how the quilt ended up. I was not sure at first but it grew on me as it came together. I was so pleased I have started a new low volume quilt – this time using a log cabin pattern. There was something fun about using such a structured pattern in an unstructured way. Here are some of the blocks I have done so far….

22Oct2012

Low Volume Quilt Challenge

Posted in Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

This weekend I decided to challenge myself to do a quiet quilt. I predominantly use bright colours and fabrics in my quilts so this would be an interesting creative step for me. I was inspired by a great quilt I saw at Red Pepper Quilts (another Aussie).

http://www.redpepperquilts.com/2012/10/a-modern-i-spy-low-volume-quilt.html

First step was to see what white/cream based fabrics I had in my stash. I surprisingly had a lot to choose from, including some fabulous Heather Ross and wonderful Aneela Hoey.

I decided on 4 inch squares for my quilt, and to focus on giving the quilt a scrappy “eye spy” feel… so lots of fun objects in amongst the dots etc.

I must admit I struggled a little with laying out the blocks. I found it hard to focus on the flow of the quilt with everything being so low intensity. This is what I ended up with.