8 inch stars… a new paper piecing adventure

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

Welcomes to the launch of another Paper Piecing Monday adventure. After a little break I found myself back making paper pieced stars… surprise! This time I am focusing on simpler 8 inch stars. First up is…

….a fun, simple fun 8 inch twisting star. I love the four piece structure for this block… it is easy to make and align the pieces and the pattern only uses 28 pieces of fabric!…

I will be revisiting this type of star again I am sure… but to start you can find the free pattern here (with numbered pieces I promise) …Twisting Star block.

Just for fun I also made one of my previous 8 inch stars…

I did this pattern as part of my Starry Night quilt and I thought it was good one to play with in this colour scheme too. The pattern can be found here…WQ Starry Night Block 1.

I am currently playing with a couple of new star designs and having a blast. More next week…

11Aug2014

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.

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.

7Jul2014

Okay I may have a star addiction…

Posted in Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

Another Paper Piecing Monday and it is another star. I may need an intervention…but not quite yet.

This block, like last weeks, is using the #opgivewarmth June colour palette that Sarah at www.nohatsinhouse.com set. It is also another great pattern from Don’t Call me Betsy’s Lucky Star BOM (this is from August 2013).

It is pretty easy with just 48 pieces, none of which are too tricky or small.

I am now eagerly awaiting Sarah’s July colour palette, but in the meantime I have paper to rip off these….

27Jun2014

Look what I have finally got done…

Posted in Finished Quilts, Paper Piecing Monday by wombatquilts

… yes I finally got my red and aqua stars into a presentable form… a finished quilt top….I can hear the gasps of surprise from here…

These stars were the product of my first Paper Piecing Monday adventures. I loved putting them together each week, challenging myself to make some complex and amazing stars.

Some of the stars were free patterns from Quilting on the Square (you can find the links to the specific patterns under my Free Paper Piecing Patterns tabs) and others were from Carol Doak’s book 50 Fabulous Paper Pieced Stars.

So in the end I had 20 amazing 12 inch paper pieced stars and no real plan what to do with them. After an online survey last year, it was decided that navy sashing did the best job of showing off each and every star to its best, so a plan was hatched. Fast forward a few months (possibly more) and after auditioning a few navy fabrics and ended up using Robert Kaufman’s Quilters Linen in navy. It was perfect the job.

So now all that is left is to remove the paper… which will be quite a task as some of these suckers are really complex…

Then it is off to a long armer for quilting. At no point did I contemplate ruining this gorgeous quilt top with my quilting. It deserves the best…plus the finished quilt is going to my Mum so I want it to be amazing.