Square in Square fun – wip Wednesday

Posted in Quilt patterns, WIP Wednesday by wombatquilts

This week I have been playing with the “square in square” quilt block (also known as a diamond in a square block). I stumbled across the pattern on the weekend and decided that I had to see what I could do with it. The first experiment is with colour – navy, emerald and pink/purple.

I am excited about how this quilt is coming together. The colours work well together and the pattern allows me to use those scraps I love so much! To make the square in square blocks I used the paper piecing pattern below. There is some good instructions on how to make this block using traditional piecing on the web, including some great instructions from Why not Sew? which you can find here.

I also used this simple pattern this week to start a 1001 Peeps quilt. I have a stash of Lizzy House fabric including quite a collection of her Arabian Nights themed fabric. I have used little bits and pieces here and there but I wanted to use one of the lines colorways to make a quilt for Project Linus. It is such fabulous kids fabric.

This pattern makes it easy to use fussy cut bits and pieces. I love how it really frames the wonderful prints in this range. I am half way through making these blocks and the quilt is coming together so quickly. I have used a few prints that are not from the line including some tone on tone fabrics and a couple of prints from other Lizzy House lines. Too much fun.

I am now off to buy a new ironing board. We somehow managed to put a hole in ours which is making ironing and quilting a little more challenging than it should be!

25Mar2013

Paper Piecing Monday

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday, Quilt patterns by wombatquilts

For this weeks block I present Carol Doak’s “Montana Star”, another fabulous pattern from her book “50 Fabulous Paper Pieced Stars“. Yes I am addicted. Yes I should move on, but when there are such great patterns to work with it is hard.

This block is a nice simple pattern with just 56 pieces that make up the eight parts to the block.

Making this block was not without its “issues”, though. I may have had a slip of concentration during construction – I am not sure if I can still blame jet lag. The result was this interesting block section and a lot of unpicking…

I maybe onto something with this mistake….it could make for an interesting quilt. I will however, leave experimenting with this for another time.

20Mar2013

Sun and Sea Quilt – WIP Wednesday

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

We have returned from Australia to a wet and cold Portland. Last week we were on the beach enjoying the weather and now we have freezing rain. It is meant to be spring but definitely feels like winter. To get myself out of my weather rut I decided to make a sunshine and beach inspired quilt this week.

Too start I raided my stash and pulled all the golden yellow/orange and sea blue fabric I could find.

This bright a cheery collection was then cut to make block pieces for a simplified Iowa star block (Block Central has an Iowa star paper piecing pattern that can be used) . I am not sure what the official term for this block is, so if you know please enlighten me.

In my jet lagged haze this block was about all I could handle. It is made up of four 5 inch blocks and all I had to do was sew down the two sides of the central triangle. Easy peasy. I managed to make quite a few block pieces before the sleepy haze took over. Going back to Oz is fun but the time difference is a killer.

There was, however, one advantage to the 14 hour flight back to the USA – I had some time to do some hexies. I had never done English paper piecing before but I had been drooling over other people’s hexies for months. Then, just before I flew out the Portland Modern Quilt Guild did a tutorial and I was hooked. To prepare for the flight I:

1. printed a pile of 1 inch hexagon blocks (I used the Hexagon creator at http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/hexagonal/) ,

2. cut a stack of fabric squares – lots of fussy cut bits a pieces; and

3. found a pair of small travel scissors that would not freak out the airline security guys.

So in between sleeping I managed to make this wonderful collection of hexies…. 51 down, 549 too go.

I am not sure what I am going to do with them. My husband is encouraging me to work out what I want to achieve before I get to far into making hexies (he is concerned by my lack of a plan!). I have been toying with the idea of doing the classic hexie flower and I may try to a couple to see how they look.

Now it is back to sunshine and the beach…..

1Mar2013

Colours of this week are purple & aqua!

Posted in Finished Quilts, Project Linus, Quilt patterns, Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

This week has been a weird week. I have not got as much done as I would have liked, as our family is preparing to run away to Australia for a couple of weeks. In between the packing and the last-minute shopping I did managed to get this quilt finished.

This quilt is made up of 16 of these 12 inch blocks.

I used a really easy pinwheel paper piecing pattern and lots and lots of scraps of fabric. There are a number of simpler versions of this block on the web but I love the extra punch of the added pinwheel. The pattern and dimensions I used are:

Eight of these pieces make up one of the finished blocks. If I was to do the quilt again I would probably stick with more strongly contrasting fabrics – the blocks that have the dark purple against the aqua are so much more punchy I think . The contrast makes the pinwheel pattern really pop.

I am still doing just straight quilting…. maybe when I return from vacation I will be sufficiently relaxed to forget the stippling nightmare. I have to be braver with my quilting. The backing is a selection of different fabrics I had in my stash. Nothing too exciting but I like how it looks, particularly the Erin McMorris “Somersault” fabric.

I finished it all up with a scrappy purple binding. I do love scrappy binding – bits of solids, bits of prints, different shades, different patterns. The scrappy does not work with all quilts but it seemed to be just right for this one.

Now it is back to packing and cleaning…..

30Jan2013

Finally back in the Pink…WIP Wednesday

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

It has been a couple of quilts since I raided my pink fabric stash and I was having withdrawal symptoms. This was the cure…..

I am using an old pattern called “stick something in the middle” which I first used many many years ago, mainly to highlight fussy/novelty prints. When I dusted the pattern off, I saw it a little differently. I can no longer find the original link to this pattern or Mary Ann’s site unfortunately. So hopefully you can just pull the pattern off this blog directly and use it, if you want.

So this week my work space (our living room) is full of pink and yellow fabric, and gold thread is replacing grey on my husbands shirt! The space may look at little messy but there is method in the chaos.

So I am slowly adding blocks to my pile. As I have been progressing with this quilt I have been adding a few more fabrics – mainly some darker pinks and a few oranges. I felt the quilt needed a little more punch.