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.

23Sep2013

Pinwheel Paper Piecing Monday

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

The pastel pin wheel fun continues this week with the latest Paper Piecing Block.

This quilt is going to scream ‘pin wheel’ by the time I have finished. I found some more fun patterns this weekend and I am excited to get some more blocks done so I can put up a wip photo for you.

This is one of the easier patterns taking only 32 pieces to complete. The blocks pattern was the “test” pattern for Don’t Call Me Betsy’s “Lucky Star Block” series I made this block before – it was part of my Paper Piecing Monday Boston Edition. One pattern, two very different blocks, which what I love about these patterns… lots of options.

I am now patiently awaiting the October block. I love getting a new pattern in my email every month, a fun little present for me to play with.

16Sep2013

Paper Piecing Monday Pastel style…

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

This week I have another pastel pretty for paper piecing Monday…

I am only three blocks into the sampler, but they have all been pinwheelesque so far and I think I am going to continue that trend for the whole quilt. The red/aqua paper piecing blocks were all mainly compass star blocks, so this quilt will be pinwheels. The hunt is now on for appropriate patterns.

I know that the Lucky Star BOM, where this pattern came from, has a couple more great pinwheels. They do tend to be fun and simple patterns to make, and I think I can take some liberties as to what I include as a pinwheel. What do you think of when you think of a pinwheel pattern?

2Sep2013

Pastel pretty – Paper piecing Monday

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

This week marks the start of my next paper piecing adventure. It took me a little while to choose my colour palette for this quilt and in the end I wanted to do something softer. So without further ado here is the first block of the series…

The block is the September block from Don’t Call Me Betsy’s “Lucky Star BOM” program. I subscribed to this series at the beginning of the year and have made a few of the blocks over the year, including for my Paper piecing Boston Blocks. They are great patterns and the fun thing is if you sign up for the BOM program now you get January to September immediately. None of the waiting month by month that I had to do – have I mentioned I am not overly patient!

This pattern is an easy 44 pieces and I love the pin wheel in the center. I hope you like the new palette and will join me next week for the block number 2.

26Aug2013

Paper Piecing Monday presents Zeppelin

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

Well the end is definitely in sight with my latest sampler quilt… with this week’s block I have enough blocks for my quilt top layout. So here is the last of my bright and grey blocks – The Zeppelin.

All of the blocks in this quilt have come from the free Block Rockn’ paper pieced series by Julie at 627Handworks. You can find the Zeppelin and the other great patterns here. Julie has just released the last pattern in this series so there are 12 free patterns in total. You should check them out – they range from easy (like this one at just 20 pieces) to complex (her last block, Floyd, is fabulous but much more intricate with 80 pieces).

Because of the size of this pattern you had to stick two pieces of paper together to make the foundation, but that was about as complex as this gets. This block fitted in nicely with the others I have done. Last night I pinned them up on my design wall, so I could start mocking up how to finish this top.

I have a vision in my head how it all should look, I now just need to work out how to make my quilt top match my idea.

I am hoping to get this top finished shortly – unlike my red/aqua top which is still sitting in a box waiting for me to decide what I want to do with it. I am desperate need of some sewing fairies… any one have some spare?