Gretchen blocks – work in progress Wednesday

Posted in Quilt patterns, Scrap quilts, WIP Wednesday by wombatquilts

At Project Linus there is a constant need for boys quilts and every now and then I make a conscious effort to make boy appropriate quilts. I must admit my fabric stash is full of wonderful florals, pinks, princesses, mermaids and other girlcentric fabric. I do try to make a lot of my quilts gender neutral – not too many flowers, appropriate backing fabric and minimal pink.

This week I pulled blues and oranges from the my stash and also raided my scrap boxes for little bits and pieces to make a quilt just for the boys. I kept the florals to a bare minimum.

After some pondering I decided to make a gretchen block quilt (partly because I love the irony of making a boys quilt using a girl named block and partly because it is a cool block). The gretchen block is an easy, traditional quilt pattern and Seven Stitches has a great tutorial on making it here. I actually went the paper piecing route and Quilterscache has a great paper pattern you can find here.

I have a pile of blocks made and a pile still to make. I have been playing with the layout of the blocks and looking at what size I want to make the finished quilt. Although this is a traditional quilt block, my interpretation is definitely modern.

I am loving how the pattern and colours work together and the scraps seem to add a really fun element to the quilt. I am excited to see how it all comes together.

4Jan2013

Flower Garden quilt finished

Posted in Finished Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

If have finally finished my Flower Garden quilt. The quilt may look familiar as I use the unfinished quilt top to as my blog header, but here it is all completed….

There is an element of crazy to this quilt. I really wanted to just use all my bright floral fabrics in one simple quilt. The end result is loud, crazy, fun and bright. I LOVE IT.

I kept the quilting simple and straight and made the back from left over fabric, scraps and fat quarters. The back is almost as fun as the front!

This quilt is also bound for Project Linus and I know without a doubt that some kid is going to love it as much as I do.

14Dec2012

Flower quilt finished

Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilts by wombatquilts

I have just finished binding my flower quilt. I previously blogged about my struggle to quilt this sucker, but now that it is all done I am sure it was worth the grief. What do you think?

Here is some of the details:

I also love the back of this quilt. For the back I made one big block, reflecting all the blocks that I had made for the front. It is the first time I have done this but it will not be the last. It is a great back.

This is also the first quilt that I have used my new quilt labels on. I found a great etsy store (here jennifersjewels.etsy.com) that made them for me and now I just have to get into the habit of adding them to my quilts.

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….

6Dec2012

Gold and Grey

Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

I have just finished my gold and grey quilt which I started a couple of weeks ago. My arm is still playing up so my quilting has slowed to a snails pace. I was inspired to do this quilt mainly because I had a stack of yellow and orange scraps left over from another project…. and I love this colour combination.

The block I decided to use is a wonky square. I have done this quilt layout before with a normal block and love how it feels almost woven. I do think the next time I will reverse the colours – a darker colour/fabric needs to be used as the predominant fabric. I f I had replaced the grey with a white fabric the woven pattern would be clearer. I now know for next time!

I originally started making this quilt with scrappy gold fabric and a solid grey fabric. As i played with the blocks on my design floor I realized that the solid grey was too dominant. My husband took one look at it and suggested using scrappy grey instead. In a quilting first for us, he was right! I did keep three of the original solid blocks in the quilt, but they are tempered by the lighter grey fabrics.

To finish the quilt I made a back using some of the scraps of gold and yellow fabric I had in my stash and then quilted it using straight lines. After last weeks stippling misadventure it is straight line quilting for me for the next couple of quilts I think.