On a mission…

Posted in Finished Quilts, Project Linus by wombatquilts

Now that I am getting back to full health I feel like I have so much to catch up on…and first thing on my To Do list is to clear some of my WIPs out of the house. The main impetuous for the clear out is the fact that you can not currently access our spare bedroom because of the pile of batting, quilts and fabric…our spare bedroom is Charity Quilt central! I have a wonderfully patient and understanding husband who is somewhat blind to fabric piles and quilting mess, but even he has started commenting.

So as we head to Thanksgiving I will be sharing mine and PMQG’s most recent quilt finishes before they head out to their respective charities. To start proceedings I give you this wonderful little quilt…

This quilt was made, along with a larger version, at one of the Portland Modern Quilt Guild Charity Sew days. This was a fun day where I bought a huge box of blue scraps, a smattering of white and grey scraps and we all made log cabins.

Somewhere in the process a touch of orange was added, at the insistence of one of our amazing Guild Members Juline, and viola you have magic.

The orange really makes the quilt sing. All the improv log cabin blocks are trimmed to 12 inches finished and this four by four version of the quilt is headed to Project Linus. The larger version of this quilt (six by seven blocks) is currently out with one of our talented long-armers.

When pulling blocks for this smaller version of the quilt I made sure to get some great novelty prints in the mix.

This was such a fun and easy project to do with the group, as once again there is no right or wrong, just playing with colour. The quilt is backed with a darling Laura Ashley fabric that seemed appropriate and bound with some navy batik fabric which was kindly donated to the Guild by Hoffman fabrics.

quilt back

Thanksgiving does seem like the perfect time to share some of the amazing quilts that our Guild has made to help our community. I am so very thankful to everyone who helps out with this program.

5Aug2015

Re-purposing Challenge Fabric

Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilts by wombatquilts

Last year the Modern Quilt Guild did a fabric challenge using Michael Miller fabric. If you follow me you will have seen a few quilts with this fabric in it, including my own Challenge entry. When our Guild handed out the fabric to its members we said that if anyone was so inclined they could use their Challenge scraps to make some blocks for the charity program. This is one of the resulting quilts…

This beautiful quilt was pieced and quilted by the wonderful Cris Pera, who is this years Guild Programs Co-ordinator.

Cris took the Michael Miller Challenge blocks and made this darling sampler quilt… using white sashing to bring the blocks together.

The blocks are all so different and there is so much amazing piecing in each block…

But I love how they all come together to make a lovely coherent quilt because they are all using the same fabric line. There should be at least one more of these quilts finished up by the end of the year…fingers crossed!

4Aug2015

Kelly’s Quilt in the spotlight…

Posted in Finished Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

In the continuing showcase of Portland Modern Quilt Guild’s charity quilts, today’s quilt is Kelly’s Quilt.

This bright, fun, scrappy improv quilt was made at our Guild’s March Charity Sew Day. During the course of the day the group took a huge box of bright, kid friendly scraps and a handful of stray orphan blocks cut them up and turned it all into a pile of 12 inch blocks.

The quilt got its name during the Sew Day when this block went up on the design wall…

Joy, one of our members commented that the girl in this block looked liked one of my fellow Board members from last year, Kelly. Everyone agreed and the quilt was then referred to all day as Kelly’s quilt.

In the spirit of improv and anything goes, the top grew into a loud riot of novelty print fun…

When it came time to quilting this top, it fell, of course to none other than its name sake, Kelly Cole of Blue Bird Sews. As soon as she knew the quilt was named after her, Kelly felt she had to quilt it.

And boy did she quilt it. Kelly did a wonderful job free motion quilting a different pattern into each block…

The end result is one of the most fun games of eye spy ever in a quilt. I love the riot of colour and texture of this quilt. You know it is going to make some kid extremely happy.

1Aug2015

Modern Sampler Quilt

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

Today I wanted to share with you another one of the beautiful quilts members of my Quilt Guild made for our charity program.

This amazing Modern Sampler quilt was pieced using blocks that members of the Guild made a couple of years ago as part of our BOM program. One of our members, Michelle took a bag of blocks and whipped up this amazing top… using fun strips of solid colours to make the different sized blocks work.

I love the colour way… that purple and aqua in particular make me very happy.

Another of our fabulous members, Colleen Barnhardt of The Quilted Thistle then took the top and wove her magic all over it. Colleen has only been quilting on a long arm for under a year which is so hard to believe because she is so AMAZING!

She quilted the most fabulous array of patterns over the different blocks…

The quilting adds so much to this quilt…. and my photos do not do it justice…

And all around the border of the quilt, Colleen added a geometric pattern in variegated cotton that just adds the most perfect border and bought the quilt together.

Yesterday I dropped off this quilt, and 11 others (including Wonky Trees) to Camp Erin, a local camp for kids who dealing with the death of someone close to them. I am so proud that our Guild does such great work for such good causes.

31Jul2015

Not just one tree in the forest…

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

Today I am spending the day delivering the latest batch of Portland Modern Quilt Guild charity quilts to a couple of charities around town…. so over the next couple of days I would like to share some of the beauties that are being dropped off starting with…

Our wonderful wonky tree quilt. Now if you have been following me for a while you will have seen a version of this quilt last year, when we made our first wonky tree charity quilt… you can check out my original post for tips on making the blocks…

This quilt block has become an annual exercise and makes for such a fun Sew Day. Basically anything goes tree wise and this year was no different. We had differently shaped trees…

Really big trees…

And really small trees….

The forest is so varied and every one has a blast just making what ever type of tree they wanted… there is no right or wrong but most people kept within the 8 inch square guideline….

We used lots of our donated scraps, and I love this exercise in particular because it allows us to use up some of the browns and olive greens we have in our donated charity stash… colours that are not always easy to use in kids quilts.

I always throw in some bright greens to the mix to add a splash of vibrancy to the forest.

To finish it all off the amazing Nancy Stovall of Just Quilting, did an awesome job. She choose an all over pattern that hints at the wind blowing through the trees. I love it so much.

For the back of the quilt one of our fabulous volunteers, Betty, made a huge tree block….

..that was just perfect for the back. This quilt was truly a wonderful group effect… thanks goes out to everyone who played along and helped make this wonderful forest.