Starry Night continues – Paper Piecing Monday

After last weeks easy (read 18 piece) blocks I decided to up the fabric piece count with this weeks star.

This fabulous star is another free pattern from Quilting on the Squares new bonus compass star patterns. The Cactus Star Block star is a 64 piece star, with enough complexity in the colouring that I had to resort to coding my pattern…

I must admit more and more orange is creeping into these stars…along with a touch of dark purple here and there. I just can not seem to limit myself too much colour wise, particularly with these more complex blocks. They work best, I think, if you have variety in your colours.

6Nov2013

Triangle Trauma – wip Wednesday

Posted in Scrap quilts, WIP Wednesday by wombatquilts

I was spurred this week to pull out an old work in progress by Ashley at Wasn’t Quilt in A Day. Her Mum told her that she could not start a new quilt until she had finished one of the ones she had already started. I took this sound advice and dusted off these blocks from the beginning of the year….

This quilt has been sitting in the cupboard because I am a little scared of triangles. This is only the second time I have worked with triangle-shaped blocks and I must admit I am not enjoying the process. You really need to be precise with your points and I have done soooo much unpicking. To help with the precision i am using a paper piecing pattern.

Emboldened by the challenge to finish this top, I pulled all the blocks I had made out and pinned them up on my design wall, using some solid fabric pink and olive triangles to break up the pattern a little.

There was then a flurry of activity to make the extra blocks I needed to make the quilt a usable size (14 blocks wide by 8 rows long).
My sewing machine was awash with strings of pink and olive fabric.

By mid afternoon I was happy with how things were looking and started sewing some of the rows of blocks together. I find this is the point where you really start to see how the finished quilt is going to look.

Last night there was a lot of unpicking….I am trying to be as precise as my patience will let me. Row by row I am going to get this sucker done.

This morning I sewed two of the rows together to check my alignment and to see how the colours and pattern are working. They are a little off in places but with this pattern it you have to look really hard to notice.

I am determined to have this top pieced by the end of today… if only so I can start something new. That is Ashley’s mum’s rule and I am going to try to quilt by it. One finished before another started. I can do this… I think!

4Nov2013

Starry Night Part 2 – Paper Piecing Monday

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

After some of the discussions about the complexity (or not) of last week’s block, I decided to do a really simple block this week.

This block, which measures only 8″ x 8″, was made using a free paper piecing pattern by Moira McSpadden at The Quilted Snail. I thought my Starry Night quilt would work best if I vary the size of some of the blocks – my usual Paper Piecing Monday size is 12″ x 12″. This block only uses a mere 18 pieces of fabric and is really quick and easy to make.

It is so easy to make I made two…

If I am honest I made this block first but was not completely happy with it so made the other version.

28Oct2013

Starry Night Paper Piecing Monday

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

First of all I have to explain, for those of you that do not know me, I have the attention span of a gnat. I get bored easily and always have more ideas than I have time. With this revelation in mind I hope you will forgive me for putting aside my pastel paper piecing blocks and starting a new project… Starry Night.

I had the idea for this series of blocks the other day while watching an episode of “Face Off” and after seeing Quilts of a Feathers fabulous WIP Tardis quilt, and just had to run with it. Then I discovered that Quilting on the Square had added a six more free blocks to it’s Compass collection and it seemed like Kismet. I promptly picked the Rolling Compass block pattern (block3countryregister) and went to work.

Another fairly simple star pattern with just 40 pieces, but once again the scraps make it look more complex than it is. I think this is going to be a fun quilt to make.

ps. last night my husband did a very technical spreadsheet thingy and choose a winner of Give Away. Congrats to Melintheattic. A bundle of fun goodies will be winging their way to you soon. And thanks to everyone for the kind comments left on the site… made me feel all mushy.

18Oct2013

Floral Crackers Fabulous Finish

Posted in Finished Quilts, Project Linus, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

I was so excited last night when I took deliver of my finished Floral Cracker’s quilt. The fabulous Rachel from 2nd Avenue Studios had used her amazing long arm/free motion quilting skills to complete this project for me.

I meet Rachel through the Portland Modern Quilting Guild and fell in love with her quilts. She does the most amazing wonky scrappy creative quilts. I was a huge fan and when she offered to quilt Floral Crackers for me I was beyond excited. Rachel also makes a lot of charity quilts and also does long arming quilting of charity quilts for the Guild. Basically she is a rock star.

I made the blocks for this quilt months ago using my black and white stash and lots of crazy floral fabrics. i raided my Kaffe Fassett stash, my Amy Butler stash as well as my friend Lisa’s stash. You can find my original post about the block, along with pattern links on how to make it here.

Rachel used a wonderful free motion flower pattern for the quilting. The shape is very “Kaffe” and mirrors several of the fabrics in the quilt.

I struggled to get decent pictures that do the quilt and quilting justice. Why do photos never capture the true beauty of a quilt?

To back the quilt, Rachel went with a gorgeous light orange dot solid. It is the perfect simple accompaniment to the crazy busy front.

Rachel also kindly did the binding for me on this quilt with her new Bernina binding magic thingy…. and I love it almost as much as I love the quilting. As a nod to me she used Kaffe Fassett’s “Aboriginal Dot” fabric.