Paper Piecing Monday the crazy edition…

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

Summer has well and truly arrived in Portland and I have been making the most of the sunshine… and not posting as much as I usually do. Sorry about that.

This of course does not mean I have not been quilting… I have still been sewing away, just a little more sporadically than usual. For the last week or so the only thing that has been up on my design wall has been my Starry Night quilt.

As you can see the jigsaw is slowly coming together. I have finished with the star blocks and I am now just making sky. Random weird bits of sky.

This week I went through my EQ7 quilting program and found a pile of paper pieced patterns and printed them out (my sky pieces are currently all 6 inch square or 3 x 6 inches). With EQ I have been able to find a pattern I think is interesting and print it out at both sizes.

Now as stand alone blocks they look a little weird but once you add them to the quilt they just blend into the background in weird and wonderful ways….

No matter how hard I tried to hide it you have probably realised by now that I did not have a grand plan when I started making these blocks, and that I am really making it up as I go along. The blocks are not being placed in any sort of grid and I am just going with the flow, piecing bits and pieces together and seeing what works.

It is a crazy way to work…but really fun. If you are interested in exploring the individual star blocks I have used, you can find links to them under the “Paper Piecing Monday” tab and/or under the “Free Paper Piecing Patterns” tab.

1Aug2014

Wonky Kites Quilt

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

A couple of weeks ago a group of PMQG members met for our monthly Charity Sew Day. These get togethers are always good fun and this one was no exception. For July I had chosen a wonky kite block for us to make… another easy scrap busters…

This quilt is so ridiculously simple. We started with a 5 inch square of our background solid, Kona Shadow and then sewed a green/blue scrap on opposite corners.

You then trim the block to 5 inches….

Then sew two block together, making sure the triangle pieces meet, but not worrying at all about matching the seams (this is the wonky way). Repeat process and then sew the two halves together to make the kite centered block…

What you end up with is a really fun, random block…

Sew them all together and you end up with a huge quilt top!

Our charity for this month has requested Twin size quilts, no mean feat at the best of times (and impossible for me to photograph properly).

This block was perfect for making sure we had a fun, modern quilt ready to go to a long armer, in a day.

It helped that we had a great team working to make blocks….

And of course the final check and block layout approval was provided by the cat!

30Jul2014

Monaluna Ohio Star production

Posted in Quilt patterns, WIP Wednesday by wombatquilts

This week I have been working on doing some more Monaluna block for the PMQG, this time I made a handful of Ohio Stars in the new Haven Range.

For the block I used the wonderful tutorial by Tessa at The Sewing Chick. Easy peasy!

I actually got quite a production line going….

Okay I admit it I got a little carried away…

But these fabrics are too much fun to not play with…

right…

I must admit I made more of these, but this is a nice selection that really highlight the lovely fabrics.

28Jul2014

Mixed Medium paper piecing Monday

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

Today’s paper piecing pattern is a little bit different from my usual fair, as it is a lovely mix of traditional piecing and paper piecing, not that you can tell from the results….

The pattern I used is Lee at Freshly Pieced’s Arkansas Traveler block. Lee’s instructions are easy to follow and I loved making a block that had a little bit of traditional piecing

as well as some good old-fashioned paper piecing….

This is the block I am setting for August for my Do Good Stitches group. I can not wait to see how everyone in the Hope Circle interprets this block….

25Jul2014

The PMQG Orphan sampler

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

At this week’s PMQG meeting we delivered a large stack of quilts to a local Charity, Camp Erin. It was so wonderful to see the beautiful quilts that people had created for this charity. Among those delivered were three quilts made at our Charity Sew Days and the Orphan block sampler I put together….

The blocks in this quilt are fabulously diverse and really kind of fun…

Some of the blocks I trimmed, some I added borders too and others I cut in half…

There are hexagons, scrappy trips, churn dashes, nine patches and modern improv blocks. We have it all…

For the backing I found a wonderfully bright and slightly obnoxious Kaffe Fassett orange floral print that was just perfect…

The beautiful quilting was done by PMQG member Kazumi Peterson. Kazumi added an overall floral motif which went perfectly with the back of the quilt and added such a pretty cohesiveness to the front of the quilt.

I then finished things off with bright orange binding. I knew that I had to highlight the orange of the quilt – the blocks and the backing. I had originally tried putting an orange border around the quilt, instead of the grey, but I found it fought with the blocks for attention. Orange binding was the perfect compromise.

My darling husband had originally called this an ugly quilt but I think he is very wrong. The finished product is fun and bright and pretty…but I am a little biased.