A personal project done….

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

I recently finished up my Grey Card quilt for the Black to White quilt challenge…

I was so thrilled with how this quilt turned out, but I was aware that it was very personal to me and may not be everyone’s taste. I entered the quilt anyway in the BTW Challenge and this morning got the email that it was not chosen for the exhibit.

There were some amazing quilts made for this challenge…check out the hashtag #btwqks to see some of the other quilts made.

Instead of hanging the quilt in an exhibit it now has pride of place in our living/lounge room…

My quilt is where it should be… and I must admit I smile every time I look at it… it reminds me of what was and what now is.

19Jun2015

Rainbow Crazy

Posted in Finished Quilts, Other fun stuff, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

This week I finished up my Rainbow Improv quilt just in time to ship it to Sisters for their quilt show next month….there is nothing like an impending deadline to get you working hard!

I started this quilt a little while ago, making the blocks in between some complex paper piecing projects. It was so much fun to do something so free from rules and constraints. You can read more about the process on my original post…

I just used a rainbow of solid fabric scraps and played with colour. I must admit I did not know what the end product would look like, I just enjoyed the process of making the blocks.

Because this quilt was going to Sister’s I wanted to do something modern for the quilting, but I did not want to distract from the blocks too much. In the end I went with my beloved straight line stitches but used a rainbow selection of thread for the quilting.

Each row of blocks got their own colour, which was so much fun to do.

I just used my walking foot as my line guide…I did contemplate marking up the quilt top but this was so much easier and worked out perfectly… I got 16 lines of stitches per row and only went a little off course, one or two times.

For the back of the quilt I went with a patchwork of solid Kona greys (Ash, Charcoal and Medium Grey), which was perfect for highlighting the change in the thread colour. If you look closely you can see the rainbow effect of the quilting.

The final touch was some scrappy grey binding, a label and I was done.

I am so thrilled with how this quilt turned out. It is so different from what I usually do, but was just so much fun to make…

Quilt Details:

Blocks: 6 inch improv blocks
Fabric: Variety of solids – Kona, Michael Miller, American Made and Bella.
Finished size: 48 x 48 inches

8Jun2015

A little miscalculation…

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

This week I finally decided on the layout for my green star quilt….and in doing so realised I was one block short! So it was back to the drawing board…literally…and a new block was designed…

This is my Outlined star…a fun little star with 32 lovely little pieces. I designed this star after staring at the other blocks on my design wall for a week or so and it seems to fit nicely into the Green star mix.

If you would like to add this star to your collection you can find a free PDF of an 8 inch pattern here….Outlined star pattern.

And here is a glimpse of what I am planning for these blocks…

I hope to have a finished quilt top to share with you on Friday…

22May2015

Fully embracing Mini Quilts

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

If you are not on Instagram you probably are not aware of the flurry of mini quilt swaps that have been happening over the last year or so. Hundreds and hundreds of mini quilts have been made a swapped all over the world and people’s homes now have walls adorned in beautiful little quilts. After resisting for nearly a year, in February I finally signed up for my first mini quilt swap – the Cotton and Steel mini quilt swap.

I shared my first quilt for this swap a couple of months ago, including the paper piecing pattern I used for this quilt on my original post…….

I liked it but I was not exactly what I wanted. So I went back to the drawing board and came up with this beauty…

I loved making this 15 inch square sampler and shrinking all these quilt blocks down to 3 inches was fun. Nearly all these blocks were paper pieced as I find it is the easiest way for me to get accuracy at this small size.

I really loved putting this quilt together…and even found some prints I could fussy cut at this small size!

So with my Cotton and Steel mini done I felt the need to sign up for another mini swap… this time the Lizzy House mini quilt swap. Now Lizzy House is my favorite designer… I love her prints. As so many of my quilts end up going to kids charities Lizzy Houses fun, modern novelty prints were an instant hit with me.

So what do you do when you have a huge collection of fabulous Lizzy House prints… you make hexagons of course…

So this is my Lizzy House mini work in progress. The day I signed up for the swap I started making hexagons and once I had them all I had a blast arranging and re-arranging them until I had a layout I was happy with.

This quilt has been so much fun to make…though a little tough on my hands as there has been a lot of hand sewing…

I started making this mini before I had my partner details (yes I was that excited!). After you sign up you get assigned a partner, you get sent a list of likes and dislikes and you can stalk them on Instagram so you can make something appropriate for them. So as much as I love these hexagons, I was not sure it was totally up my partners alley… so I made another mini…

..which is much more her style. This quilt is uses four different New York beauty patterns… and I love the unity of the similar shapes of the New York Beauty block combined with the disconnect of the different patterns pieces.

I am sure my partner will love which ever mini I end up sending. I have a couple more weeks before the quilts have to be sent and there is a chance I will change my mind again and make something else. This is the joy of mini quilts…they are so quick and easy to make.

So I can now say I am a mini quilt addict, though I have controlled myself this month and not signed up for any more swaps…yet.

8May2015

When your old life intersects with your new…

Posted in Colour Play by wombatquilts

When the Modern Quilt Guilds of the Pacific Northwest were recently invited to submit quilts for a Quilt Show in August I was a little apprehensive. The guild lines were that the quilts could use black, white and the shades of grey in between and as you can tell from my quilts I love colour. We were allowed, if we wanted, to add one colour in one place but that was it.

I pondered this challenge for a month or so and then one day, as I was talking to an old friend it hit me what I could do. You see in my previous life I was in film and a key essential tool in the camera kit was always a grey card. This card was used to white balance and focus the camera (back in the old days before digital took over!). A grey card would make the perfect quilt for this project….

So I found an image similar to the cards I used to use…

Did some crazy quilts maths… not something I usually do and not something that comes easily to me…

Pulled some greys from my stash…

And went to work. The end result was this…

I am thrilled with how it turned out. I was really impressed with the depth of my grey stash, which allowed me to do some fun colour graduation….

I cheated a bit and used some black and white stripes for the focus bars… I was not going to be able to get that kind of sharp precision with piecing… (but it is driving me crazy that photos in this post seem out of focus unless you click on the image to enlarge it….@%*$#^! WordPress….AUGH!!!!!

I also managed to get my favorite prints, Mirror Ball and Pearl Bracelets into the mix. Now all I have to do is work out how I want to quilt it. I was thinking of echoing the circle on the card in the quilting but that is as far as I have gotten so far. I do know that I am going to add one tiny splash of colour in the binding.

I am really thrilled with this mini quilt (it is 36″ long by 28″ wide)… not because it is amazing or beautiful or revolutionary. I love it because it has such meaning for me. As I stepped out of my film career I stepped into quilting… and this quilt represents that life change for me.