Colour Play Turqoise

Posted in Colour Play, Quilt patterns, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

This week I decided to play with turquoise and my all time favorite neutral, navy blue. There was something about this colour combination and snow that just seemed to work. First I raided my scraps and then pulled this bundle from my stash…

I had used navy and turquoise together before, but with “radiant orchid” and some electric blues thrown into the mix.

This time I wanted to keep it simple, clean, cool. I choose an easy block called “World Without End”. This classic quilt block dates back to the 1900’s and I found some wonderful old examples when searching on-line, including one from the Spencer Museum of Art. For my project I used Quilters Cache’s free paper piecing pattern which you can find here.

This is another quick, fun block that packs a punch, and is perfect for scraps. I just loved how the strong colour contrast with this pattern.

I was surprised how big my turquoise stash was and it has been great fun cutting into it for this project. I have added this to my list of “must finish” for 2014… a list that keeps getting bigger. I need some sewing fairies pronto!

7Feb2014

A blue finish

Posted in Finished Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

This week I managed to get my sister in laws quilt finished, photographed and posted. It took me way longer than I hoped, but I am glad it is finally on its way to sunnier climes.

The quilt was too long to be photographed in my usual spot so I took it out to the local park and hung it on the fence around the baseball practice area. It was a little to wet and muddy to get more creative but I liked the location change-up.

The blocks for the quilt were made using the “Trip Around” technique and tons and tons of blue solids. If you are interested you can read more about the initial design process here.

For the quilting I was originally just going to do straight line stitching in on diagonally on the quilt in one direction. It made the quilt feel like the water was flowing in one direction, which I loved. I then had the brilliant idea to add ten lines of quilting diagonally opposite to the flow to represent the ten years that my sister-in-law has been married…the ten years where her path has intersected with someone else. Okay I was being really sentimental and mushy and I will stop now!

I backed the quilt with the perfect print from Lizzy House’s “Constellations” collection and hand bound it with a variety of dark solids. I am hoping that Christine loves this quilt as much as I do…

5Feb2014

Colour Play – Brown

Posted in Scrap quilts, WIP Wednesday by wombatquilts

Last weekend, while my husband was away on a “dude’s weekend” I took the opportunity to clean up my stash a little. Needless to say there was fabric from one end of the house to the other… it looked like a fabulous colourful fabric bomb had gone off. During this process I realized I had somehow accumulated a decent size stash of brown fabric. I am still not sure how this happened as brown is definitely not a colour I use at all, ever, but now I had found it I of course had to use it.

I love a good challenge and finding good uses for brown fabric is a perfect challenge for 2014. Fired up it took me less than 5 minutes to find some inspiration in my house, and the game was on.

This inspiration, a glass vase….

became this fabric pull…

The pattern I chose was a fabulously simple free paper piecing number from Quilters Cache… the Fly Foot 2 .

Which when you do alternating colour blocks turns out like this…

These blocks when added to other blocks make this amazing plaid like pattern…

For the first time in my quilting life I have used brown as a predominate colour and I love the results. There will be more brown combinations in my future… so stay tuned.

3Jan2014

A special little quilt

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

Last night I managed to finish one of two little quilts I have been wanting to make for a while now. These quilts are special not just because of their lack of colour, but because of the thinking behind them.

This simple little quilt is made up of a variety of 3 inch squares of white and cream tone on tone fabrics. I was inspired to make this quilt after seeing the fabulous Molli Sparkle’s “No Value quilt“. It was a challenge to work with just white but it was great fun. I ended up using off white and cream to get some variation in the quilt, so the eye had something to follow.

So why tiny little white quilts… Christmas last year some friends of our suffered the heartache of having their son be still born. It is a heart ache I can not imagine, but one that a few people I know have suffered. There was nothing I could do at the time but cry, support and pray. Recently I was talking to some members in our Project Linus group who told me about the little white blankets that a group had been knitting and crocheting for some local hospitals. These tiny blankets are used to wrap a child in when it is presented to its parents to say goodbye. The parents can then take the blanket home as a remembrance of their child.

I do not knit but I thought that a tiny quilt would be just as useful. So I set about making two little quilts in remembrance of my friends and their son. As with all my quilts there is a splash of Mirror Ball and a splash of Pearl Bracelet fabric… and a huge dash of love.

I backed this quilt with a scrap of white fabric I had and a splash Mirror Ball and bound the quilt with Michael Miller’s Couture Cotton in Cream.

I have one more of these quilts to bind and then they are off to do their job of bringing comfort and support. There are a number of wonderful charities that delivery blankets/quilts to hospitals for this need, including Forever Warm in the USA, Sands in Australia, Sands in the UK and of course your local Project Linus chapter or Neonatal hospital.

On a much happier note, our friends who suffered such heartbreak last year have just had a beautiful, healthy baby girl. Life really is a wonderful roller coaster of a ride.

13Dec2013

Block Rock’n Sampler quilt

Posted in Finished Quilts, Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

After a year of Paper Piecing Monday I have finally finished a quilt from my Monday blocks. I am very proud to present my Block Rock’n sampler quilt top.

All these blocks are from Julie at 627Handwork’s fabulous free Block Rock’n pattern collection. There are only two blocks from her collection missing from this quilt – my Icky Thump block became part of the beautiful Icicle quilt and Julie’s Floyd block which I have not made yet.

Block rockn quilt detail

For the record my favourite block is this beauty….

For the quilting of this lovely , I went with diagonal lines, which seemed appropriate with the off center block placement I went with.

For the backing I found some fabulously outrageous IKEA fabric in my stash which was just perfect. The photo does not do these neon lips justice.

The final touch was some solid Kona grey binding, which was attached using the sewing machine. I figured that this quilt might get a lot of love (and stains) and wanted it to be as durable as possible. Machine binding, though not as pretty as hand binding, in my opinion, does add some sturdiness.