A special selection…

Posted in Finished Quilts by wombatquilts

It has been quite a while since I have posted photos of some of the charity quilts that members of the Portland Modern Quilt Guild have made, so I hope you will indulge me as I share some of the recent projects…

trip around quilt

First up is a scrappy trip along top… the blocks and extra fabric was donated to the Guild by the wonderful Elsa and all I had to do sew the blocks together and make the back….

trip around quilt detail 3

We put this top on the long arm at one of our Charity Sew Days and a number of people had a blast quilting flowers all over it….

quilt back

And for the back of the quilt I pieced together the left over fabric and a few extra fat quarters and viola…

Bernstein bears quilt

Another donation to the Charity program was a couple of charm packs of fun Bernstein Bear fabric, which were easily turned into disappearing nine patch blocks…

Bernstein bears quilt detail

This fabric is so fun and bright not to much was need too make a fabulous kid friendly quilt…

orphan block quilt

And it would not be a Charity quilt showcase without some orphan block quilts starting with this fun number.

orphan block quilt detail

I love all the quilting on this quilt….each block has a different pattern but all the pattern use straight lines.

And last but not least is this orphan block quilt that one of our wonderful members, Juline, put together. I love Juline’s use of negative space with this quilt… she made a handful of similar blocks into a wonderful modern quilt.

I will try and get some photos of our group quilts up in the next couple of days as well, if the Portland weather permits.

17Jan2014

Christine’s Quilt

Posted in Scrap quilts by wombatquilts

Some how, in between meetings, deadlines, dr’s appointments and the usual day to day chaos I managed to finish the top for my sister in law’s quilt. I was of course hoping to finish the whole quilting process by today but life had other plans. This is as far as I have got…

I made the blocks for this quilt using the Trip Around the World process and then instead of sewing the strips in order I mixed things up a little. My blocks ended up looking random and pixellated and a little cool. You can find my original post about the block here.

So now I have a quilt top made up of 2 inch squares of solid blues with a hint of blue purple thrown in. My stash of solid blues is now almost depleted but I am so thrilled with the result.

Now I just have to quilt this cascading waterfall up, bind it and get it to SoCal. Not a problem!

8Jan2014

Going with the flow…

Posted in WIP Wednesday by wombatquilts

Last Friday I became determined to make my sister in-law a quilt. I had spent months procrastinating, putting idea after idea up on the design wall and pulling it all down again. All I really had to go on was that she loves blue and is a no-nonsense, straight talking, fabulous woman. Finally I decided to do a blue trip around the world quilt. I delved into my stash and pulled out all my blue solids, which I was surprised to discover was a substantial wad and set to work.

I spent Saturday merrily cutting 2 1/2 x 16 1/2 inch strips from my pile of solids. I loved the colours together but I was becoming less and less sure about the quilt design. As my darling husband commented on Saturday evening “don’t those trip around quilts tend to have patterns in them”. Yes my nervousness at the lack of pattern in my fabric was getting to me. I had made a solid trip along before which turned out nicely…

but I was still nervous about it. With no other viable options at this point, I continued the process – sewing the strips in groups of 6, then sewing it into a tube, then cutting the tube into 2 1/2 strips. If you have done a Trip Around the World you know the process… if you do not know what I am talking about Quiltsville is where it all started. So now I had a stack of strips of squares…

Usually you pull your tube’s apart and put them back together in just a way to get this block…

but it was at this point in the process I threw out the instructions and went a little wild. I started sewing random strips together so my blocks look more like this…

I was not sure if it would work, but the idea of doing another Trip Around quilt all of a sudden was not at all appealing. So now I have a wild, pixelated, modern quilt that is coming together like this…

And I love it. I am so thrilled with how my deviation from the plan is working out. I am embracing the random and the crazy and just going with it. So far I have 8 blocks done and have 22 more to go. My design wall currently looks like this…