quilted bucket | WOMBAT QUILTS

I have been waiting for this day for what seems like ages…. today, this day, when I get to take part in the Blog Hop for my friend Sam Hunter’s new book, Quilt Talk.

I first heard of Sam through her “We Are Sew Worth It” campaign, which was eye opening for me. Sam started a serious conversation about the value of our work, a quilter’s work, as artists, which continues to resonate with me.

About 6 months later I was thrilled to hear that Sam had moved to Portland and joined the Portland Modern Quilt Guild. The first time I met her I knew I had found a kindred spirit- she was straight talking, feisty, talented and hilarious (if you want to know what Sam’s sense of humor is like take a closer look at the buckets on the cover of her new book!)

You can imagine my excitement when I found out Sam was doing a paper piecing book… Quilt Talk is designed around a paper pieced font, which includes a full alphabet with letters, numbers, special characters and accents There is also a dozen lovely projects that you can customize with your own words… my fave is this Star Wars inspired beauty (yes I am a geek)…

As part of the Blog Hop Sam has given each Hop host the paper pieced pattern for a particular word and a link on how to use them to make the buckets on the cover of her book. My word is appropriately…

DOWNLOAD THE HEXIES PATTERN HERE….

You can collect the full set of patterns by visiting the other Blog Hop hosts…

Thursday, October 2 – PURPLE – Megan Dougherty, The Bitchy Stitcher
Friday, October 3 – BROWN – Carrie Bloomston, Such Designs
Monday, October 6 – RED – Kim Niedzwiecki, My GoGo Life
Tuesday, October 7 – TEAL – Flaun Cline, I Plead Quilty
Wednesday, October 8 – WHITE – Molli Sparkles
Thursdays, October 9 – HEXIES – Cath Hall, Wombat Quilts
Friday, October 10 – PINK – Ebony Love, LoveBug Studios
Monday, October 13 – GREEN – Rose Hughes
Tuesday, October 14 – BLUE – Sarah Fielke
Wednesday, October 15 – GRAY – Maddie Kertay, The BadAss Quilter’s Society
Thursday, October 16 – BLACK – Cheryl Sleboda
Friday, October 17 – YELLOW – Victoria Findlay Wolfe
Monday, October 20 – ORANGE (but of course!) – Sam Hunter, Hunter’s Design Studio

Sam has also kindly given me a copy of the book to give away to one lucky reader… so if you would like to win a hard copy of this fabulous book just leave a comment, telling me what your favorite colour is… a random winner will be drawn on Sunday night (12th October) and announced during Paper Piecing Monday’s post.

In my sewing career I have made hundreds of quilts and one fancy dress costume. Once or twice I have hemmed or mended a few clothing items on the sewing machine but that is absolutely it, until this week.

Rewind a little bit to last month’s Portland Modern Quilting Guild meeting where a new swap was proposed. I had never participated in a swap before, they scare me a little – you have to do something on deadline to please someone else. Too much pressure for me. Last month though, thru a combination of pain medication and peer pressure I said yes to making a quilted container.

Fast forward to this week. I need the container for Thursday’s meeting and I had not even started. I had spent weeks procrastinating and convincing myself I could not do this. With time running out I bite the proverbial bullet and started. The Guild website had helpfully linked to a number of free tutorials, so I picked one – 1/4″ Mark.com’s quilted bucket and went to work.

Step one.. I selected some unused blocks to use in the body of the bucket. These paper pieced stars set the colour scheme for the finished piece

Step two… I made the bottom of the bucket (this step also involved spray basting my fingers together)

Step three… I did some maths (the hardest part of the whole darn process), deconstructed the blocks and made the body of the bucket.

Step four, five and possibly six… quilted the bucket body, then pinned the bottom piece to the body piece.

Which resulted in this…

Step seven… turned the outside piece inside out and attached handles

Steps eight to twelve… selected lining fabric, cut bottom and side bits, sewed them together, turned them inside out and sewed them to the quilted outer piece. By this stage I was loosing the will to live, but bravely carried on.

Step two hundred and six five… nearly finished… I pulled the quilted part through a small 2 inch whole left in the lining part to reveal this…

My finished bucket. The sides of the bucket are 12 inches and the base is 8 3/4 inches. I think if I was to make it again I would make the sides a little smaller but other than that I am pleased with the finished product. So pleased I took lots and lots of photos…

finished bucket 5