A fun Bee block…

Posted in Quilt patterns by wombatquilts

This month I am the designated Quilter for my Do.Good.Stitches group….which means I get to set the block for the month that my other Bee members will be making. My recent down time allowed me to paw over quilting books for hours uninterrupted which was a wonderful pleasure…and one of the patterns I found in an old quilting book was this block called Homeward Bound…

The finished block is 12 inches square (12 ½ unfinished) and is pretty simple to put together… all you need is…

Four (4) 3 ½ x 3 ½ squares for the outer fabric (grey)

Four (4) 3 ½ x 5 inch rectangles of the cross fabric (electric blue)

One (1) 3 ½ x 3 ½ inch square of the center fabric (light blue)

Four (4) 2 x 5 inch strips of sashing (white)

Four (4) 2 x 3 ½ strips of sashing (white).

You can see above how I pieced the block together in segments which made for quick and accurate assembly. It is a fun block and I love the overall patterns these blocks are going to make…

I can not wait to get all the blocks in… it is going to be fun watching this quilt come together.

2Nov2015

The Hodge Podge returns…

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

Just before I went off-line for a couple of weeks, I had started to make my own sampler, using vintage quilt blocks from 100+ years ago. I am loving how these blocks are coming together and decided to keep going with this project, so here is block number 4…. the Churn Dash…

This block is also referred to as The Wrench in some quilt books. This six inch block was pretty easy to paper piece and as with all my Hodge Podge blocks you can find the free paper piecing pattern here….churn dash pattern.

You can also use this pattern to make a Greek Cross block….

There are many more Hodge Podges to come… I may not have been able to sew in the last couple of weeks but I could wield a mouse and design some blocks!

2Oct2015

The Weekender Quilt

Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilts by wombatquilts

This week I am finally getting the chance to share with you a quilt I finished last month. This quilt started as a small bundle of fat quarters that were donated to the Portland Modern Quilt Guild Charity program…. I added some fabric from my stash, a couple of solids and made this beauty…

The fabric line that kicked this all off was Weekends by Erin McMorris, an old line from 2012. I had some of the line, as well as some of Erin’s Wildwood line in my stash so I was able to get enough fabric to make a decent sized quilt.

I love the colour palette of this quilt, olive green, apricot, soft purple, dusty pink and cream. It is a gentle but vibrant colour scheme.

And in amongst the florals of the fabric are a smattering of these darling bicycle…

You probably recognize the pattern I used, it is one of my favorite go to patterns, the Trip Around quilt. I have made a few Trip Around quilts now and love how easy it is to make and how every quilt is so different…

This quilt top finished up big, particularly for me, and there was no way I was going to be able to quilt it on my home machine…my busted back just will not let me. So my local quilt store, Modern Domestic, kindly allowed me to throw the quilt up on the Bernina long arm.

It was so much fun to quilt loopy flowers into this quilt using the Q24 longarm. I am slowly getting more confident with free motion….very slowly….and love the adjustable handles on this baby…. it makes it so easy to find a comfortable position to work the machine in.

As a label for the quilt I got creative, inspired by one of our Guild long armers, Dawn… and quilted PMQG into the bottom of the quilt.

The finishing touches were a scrappy solid binding of beige… not a colour I use often in binding but it worked wonderfully.

This quilt is destined for NW Impact’s program that looks after Seniors at risk… it is fun to be charity quilting this quarter for an older set, as it has forced me out of my usual bright novelty kids centered world.

Quilt Details

Name: The Weekender
Pattern: Scrappy Trip Around The World
Fabric: Weekends and Wildwood by Erin McMorris and select Kona solids
Finished Size: 60 x 72 inches

30Sep2015

More Hodge Podge….

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

As promised I am posting another on of my Hodge Podge Sampler blocks…today’s block has the wonderful title of Mosaic No.1 and is block number 334 in the 1922 version of the Ladies Art Company Quilt Pattern book (link to this later version of the book can be found here).

The free paper piecing pattern for this block can be found here….Mosaic No1 block.

If you downloaded my first pattern, the Arkansas Snowflake on Monday, the pattern is a little small….Monday evening I amended the PDF so everything is fine, but you may want to down load the new pattern just in case…Arkansas snowflake pattern.

Now the final piece of business is naming the winner of this fabric bundle…

I had 300 entries for the draw and the lucky winner, selected at random is… Linda who commented “I don’t seem to have much of an imagination when I want to buy fun fabrics, so this lot certainly would give my, umm, somewhat ‘boring’ stash a fresh and happy ‘zing’! I think I would make my first ever hexie quilt; Recently, I punched out a huge bag of hexies, then realized I didn’t have any fun fabrics to make hexies with, so there sits the bag, on my coffee table, making me feel guilty…..”

Congratulations Linda and thank you to everyone who entered.

28Sep2015

Paper Piecing Monday’s Hodge Podge sampler…

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

For a month or so I have been thinking about what I wanted to do for the next Paper Piecing Monday series, and I finally decided I wanted to do a sampler quilt. Now there are lots of different sampler quilts/patterns/books out there, The Farmers Wife, Dear Jane, the Women of the Bible as well as more modern samplers like Tula Pink’s 100 City Sampler and Elizabeth Hartman’s Patchwork City.

I looked at all my options and made two key decisions… I wanted to got traditional and I did not want to do all the half square triangles that are involved in most of the Farmers Wife/Dear Jane etc. blocks. So I pulled out some of the reference books I have and trawled through the online copy of the Ladies Art Company Quilt Pattern Book of 1898 (you can check it out here).

So my new adventure will be mainly paper pieced interpretations of very traditional blocks…where I can I will give you the name or names the block goes by as well as any different layouts for the block pieces…with a few of these traditional blocks different fabric placement gives you a completely different block and block name. All the blocks will all be 6 inches square finished.

So to start I give you my version of the Arkansas Snowflake…