Another Starry Night wonder

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

After a relaxing week off I am slowly getting back into the swing of quilting again…very slowly. For this week’s paper piecing Monday I decided to do another Carol Doak star.

I do love how this blocks look all fractured and broken but really beautiful at the same time. For this star I used the Washington Star pattern from my trusty copy of “50 Fabulous Paper Pieced Stars”.

This block, and it’s 64 pieces was a real scrap buster. I did not cut one piece of fabric to make this block and just used bits and pieces from my scrap bin. This process made me realise I have way to many little bits of fabric….sorting thru my scrap bins is now on my “Things to Do in 2014” list.

11Dec2013

More Tula Pink fun

Posted in WIP Wednesday by wombatquilts

I am still a little in holiday mode this week and have been taking things easier – which means no marathon sewing sessions or fabric cutting frenzies. What better to do in this relaxed state, than make a few more blocks for my City Sampler quilt.

Back in May I started making blocks from Tula Pink’s “100 Modern Quilt Blocks“. I loved the slow easy pace of making one block at a time – leisurely cutting the block pieces, then making the block, then moving onto the next. I made a dozen or so blocks in my first run and then put them aside. This week I added a few more blocks to the collection…

Block No 5….

My favorite No. 14..

No. 28…

And the fabulously obnoxious, the “I probably should have thrown in a solid”, No. 18….

Every time I add another block to this sampler it changes. I was playing with some of the blocks on the design wall, just to see how it was coming together and this is what I came up with….

For the finished quilt I think I will be sashing around the blocks as it is the best way to let each blocks breath and shine. So 16 blocks down…only 84 to go!

9Dec2013

Snowflakes paper piecing Monday style

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

This week I have taken a break from my Starry Nights to make a quilt block for Nicole at Modern Handcraft. As part of the ScrapBeelicious Bee, Nicole asked for Christmas inspired blocks which put me into an absolute blind panic.

You see the truth is I do not understand Christmas quilts. It may be because where I am from it tends to be about 90 degrees + on Christmas day and a quilt is the last thing on earth you want anywhere near you. It may be because I do not understand making a quilt that you use, at most, one month of the year. Do not get me wrong, I LOVE Christmas, I just do not get Christmas quilts.

So with that in mind I pondered what to do for this month’s blocks…. and this is what I came up with.

A scrappy snowflake star. Nicole did say her colours where white, grey and red. Okay it does not scream Christmas but it is very pretty. I mashed up two of Carol Doak’s patterns again from her “50 Fabulous Paper Pieced Star” book – this time Oklahoma and Ohio. My pieces count on this one is 100 – the Oklahoma block is a little fiddly.

My next block for Nicole will be a more festive… which means I will throw in some red and maybe some green for good measure.

7Oct2013

Foxy Paper Piecing Monday

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

Okay I could not help myself…I just had to do it…

I decided that my low volume quilt needed a block from No Hat’s In the House fabulous Forest quilt, as a not too subtle nod to the amazing quilt that inspired my low volume sampler. So I bit the bullet and headed over to the Forest QAL and picked one of their FREE paper piecing blocks.

These patterns are crazy good but complex. How complex I hear you ask… well my fox took four colours…

cut into 99 scraps of fabric…

sewn onto 27 separate pattern pieces…

that were then sewing into three sections…

These sections were then sewn together to make one incredible block.

I was so thrilled with how this block turned out and I kept shoving it in my husbands face saying “look how fabulous this is”… “isn’t this block incredible”… “have you ever seen anything so amazing”. He was not as excited as I had hoped about the whole thing. Actually his response was decidedly underwhelming. Going to have to get him to work on that.

He just keeps saying “what does the fox say“….

4Oct2013

A solid finish

Posted in Finished Quilts, Quilts, Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

I committed this week to try to finish a quilt a week for October… and I mean baste, quilt and bind. I want to try to get as many quilts finished and delivered to Project Linus before the holidays. A crazy goal I know, but I have to give it a go.

To start this slightly mad schedule I decided to make another trip around quilt. I love these quilts, they are so easy and fun to make. This one is a little different for me can you tell how?

Those of you who know my work will note a distinct lack of pattern on the fabric. Yep I made a completely solid quilt. I have only made one of these before and it was a disaster, luckily this one came out much much better.

My Trip Along started life as a jelly roll, that has been sitting in my stash for quite a while….

I love the colours of the roll, but did not know what to do with it until I had to make some Bee trip around blocks recently. Those blocks inspired me to make another Trip Around quilt and so the fun started. I managed to get 16 x 12 inch blocks out the one jelly roll (with a little finagling to get the last block complete).

With the first Trip Around quilt I did I went scrappy, bright and used the traditional block layout but with this quilt I went with a wave layout.

My hand is still not allowing me to do any quilting other than straight lines, but luckily I think it works perfectly with this quilt top. I quilted diagonally across the top using a nice Sulky thread to add some shine to the stitches, my way of compensating for the lack of print on the fabric.

To finish it all off I had to find a piece of backing fabric that would compliment and offset the solid fabric front. I was thrilled to find in my stash this AMAZING Alexander Henry print.

Here is a close up detail on the fabulous jungle print. It really is the most perfect fabric for this quilt.

All that was left was to label and machine bind the quilt. Staying true to the front of the quilt I went with a Kona solid binding in dusty purple.

So one quilt down for this month a few more to go…

Fine print: I do reserve the right to subtly or not so subtly pull out of my “one quilt a week” schedule. I also reserve the right to call myself crazy for setting such a schedule.