This week I have been working on a quilt that was inspired by the Jacaranda tree and in particular the silk screen print my brother-in-law did.  The print has been sitting in my quilting room, waiting to be framed, and this week I thought the colours would work well for a quilt.

I played with the idea of purple with black & white fabrics, but felt I have  been overusing my b/w stash.  Instead I went with greys and choose a pattern that reminded me of a tree (but ended up looking like an arrow!).  The end result of my test run was this collection of blocks.

I think I am going to have fun with this one.  I have made some grey/grey blocks and some purple/purple blocks and can not wait to start playing with some random layouts.  My husband wanted me to put some order into the layout – he is a science geek and loves there to be pattern, even if it is hidden.  Me, I love random when I can get it.  I think that is why I love scrap quilting so much, it allows for random in amongst the pattern.

The pattern is a free paper piecing pattern from Christine Thresh which can be found here.  I just pulled the gif from the site and sized it up in Photoshop.

I also managed this weekend to finish a couple quilt tops that I had lying around.  The first one is the 1001 Peeps top I started a last week.  It was quick, easy and fun to make.  Now all I have to do is quilt it and bind it.

The other top I finished was not so quick and easy… I have been trying to finish it for weeks.  It was a little more fiddly than some of my other patterns but worth the effort.  I still have to pull all the paper off the back but I have trained my husband up to help with this process, so it should be quick.

I am trying to train myself to not start a new project until I have finished one of my old ones.  The question then becomes, does finishing a top count or do I only count quilted and bound projects?

This month there are a couple of resolutions in our house, that may or may not work.  Firstly my husband thought it would be a good idea if we did not eat any processed sugar during May.  I do not remember agreeing to this at all, but it seems that sugar is off the menu.  If the posts get erratic, the colours get to bright or I stop making sense, it is because I am suffering withdrawals.

The second resolution for May was to finish up more of the quilt tops I have floating around.   This resolution came about as I finished another two quilt tops this week and the pile of UFOs grew to an embarrassing level.  More quilting less piecing.  Combine this resolution with the other one and it could be an interesting month!

Anyway the two tops I finished up this week are both from the same pattern…. I blogged them originally here.  I used this pattern…

..to make this quilt.

This was a fun scrap quilt to make – lots of turquoise, navy (my favorite colour) and pink/purple.  I really like this colour combination, which I stumbled across while playing with my piles of fabric.

The other quilt top I finished was my 1001 Peeps top.

I was battling the wind when I was taking these photos.  It is the problem of photographing tops as opposed to full quilts – there is no weight to hold them in place in even a gentle breeze.

It is another reason why I have to quilt these suckers before I post.  I see a lot of basting in my near future!

WIP Wednesday seemed like a good time to take stock of what I have “in progress” at the moment.  So here goes…

1.   Blocks almost ready to be made into a top…

Paper Piecing Monday blocks… one block to go!

Granny squares ready to go

2.  Quilt top needing the paper pattern removed…

3.  Quilt tops waiting to be basted and quilted….

Sunburnt Country top

Square in square quilt top

1001 Peeps square in square quilt top

4.  Quilts ready to go to Project Linus…

7.  Ongoing project that may take me years….

Hexagon flowers… all hand done!

6..  Very old quilts that have been sitting in my cupboard (or in storage in Australia) for YEARS…

My first ever quilt top… circa 1997

1930′s Star quilt… circa 2000

Kaffe Fassett floral quilt top… circa 2008

Novelty rainbow quilt top… circa 2009

So where do I start…. It is all so overwhelming!

This week I did a bit of a spring clean on my fabric stash.  I pulled out a ton of novelty fabrics that I have had for years and years, but really do not work with my current esthetic.  I then spent hours cutting hundreds of 8 inch blocks for Project Linus and when I got bored, what was left was bundled up to give to the charity as well.  I am sure they will be used to make some great kids quilts.

The process got me thinking about the fabric I now treasure and use.   If you have seen any of my recent work you will notice I love to make scrap quilts.  I love how you can play with colour and pattern within scrap quilt.  In my most recent quilts I have used fabric I have had for 10+ years alongside newer fabrics to my stash.  Don’t get me wrong, I have designers and collections I have hoarded and use as well – anything by Heather Ross, Aneela Hooey, Lizzy House and Denise Schmidt, but my heart currently belongs to scraps.

My stash is sorted two ways…

1.  The above designers collections as well as my 1930′s fabric and Kaffe Fassett fabric get their own separate box – I have box for Heather fabric, a box for Aneela’s fabric etc.

2.  Each colour (red, blue, green etc)  has its own box or two.

What I consider my neutrals (which includes white/cream) tend to have more than one box….

Navy blue

Black & white

Grey

Within my colour boxes there are some fabric lines that I consider my “go to” staples.  Nearly every quilt I have made in the last 6 months has included some of these lines.

1.   Lizzy House’s Pearl Bracelets…. I started collecting Pearl Bracelets with her Castle Peeps line and then went a little overboard when they were released as a separate line.  I bought a 1/2 yard of all of them at Hawthorne Threads.

Lizzy House’s Pearl Bracelet

2.  While on Lizzy House…. her Jewels fabric is a fabulous modern tone on tone line that I use all the time.  Again I started collecting this line with Castle Peeps and pick it up whenever I find it.

Lizzy House’s Jewel fabric

3.  Art Gallery’s Oval Elements are another fabulously modern tone on tone fabric that I use regularly.  I love the quality of Art Gallery fabric, they are sooo soft and the colour choices with this line is incredible.

Oval Elements by Art Gallery Fabrics

4.  The glittery fun that is Michael Miller’s Mirror Ball Dot.  I love sneaking some of this fabric in to give my quilts a subtle little sparkle and have used up most of my stash of this line!

Michael Miller’s Mirror Ball Dot fabric.

5.  Talking of dots… I have a huge collection of them in my stash.  My go to dot  fabrics are Michael Millers “Ta Dot” and Kaffe Fassett’s “Spots“.  You can not fail with these beauties.

I have recently started adding copious amounts of chevrons into my stash as well.  They are giving my dot collection a run for it’s money!

I must admit I have become less afraid as time goes on, of using the last bit of a fabric because I realised there is always more beautiful fabrics coming down the pipe line.  I am currently saving my money for Heather Ross’s Briar Rose.

Today’s paper piecing Monday is a little detour from the regularly scheduled sampler quilt.  Over the weekend Amanda at What the Bobbin? started a fussy square block swap and I was so excited I started making blocks almost immediately.  There is swap joining details and a downloadable pattern on her site.

The idea of pulling out some of my fun novelty fabrics, fussy cutting them and making them into 4 inch blocks was too much fun…. here is what I have done so far.

I have so many great novelty scraps I can see myself getting quite carried away.  But for now I am going to finish making my 12 blocks, then move onto finishing up some of the quilt tops I have laying in pieces around my work space.  I want to have a finish for Friday.

Have a great week.

I have been working hard this week to start clearing the backlog of quilt tops I have floating around my work space.  What is spurring me on is the fact that I have not donated quilts to Project Linus for a couple of months now and am feeling a little bad about it.

So I spent yesterday day basting some tops up and managed in amongst it all to get my 1001 Peeps top finally finished.  I first blogged about this quilt months ago (you can find the link here).  So without further ado here is finally a compete finish.

I love the 1001 Peeps range by Lizzy House, actually I love everything Lizzy House does.  She is one of my favorite fabric designers and you will see her Pearl Bracelet range in just about everything I do.

This square in square pattern is so easy and just perfect for fussy cutting.

I backed the quilt using scrap bits of the fabric I had left over from making the front and a splash of solids.

Finally I bound and labeled the quilt so it is now ready for delivery to the Project Linus meeting this month.

I am hoping to get at least another two tops finished this week.  Wish me luck.

I am so thrilled to have finally finished my star string quilt top… and extra thrilled that it turned out exactly like I pictured it.  So without further ado, here she is in all her scrappy wonderfulness…

I must admit my strong feelings about this quilt maybe effected slightly because I designed the quilt block.  You can find the free paper piecing pattern and details about my  inspirations here on the original post.

I had a lot of fun making this quilt slowly, piece by piece.  Using colour pencils and paper I worked out each square in advance.

The central stars are made from lots of little bits from my scrap pile.  The black and white fabrics were a little bit of scrap pile and a lot of stash cutting.

I wanted bright colours for the stars and mainly worked with red, yellow, orange, blue, green and purple with a smattering of apricot, fuchsia and citron.

The finished quilt top is 62 inches square – five blocks across five blocks down.  This of course meant there was a lot of paper to pull off the back.

I am now off to vacuum up the paper and thread pieces that are littered all over our living room floor, before my husband comes home!

I managed to get my Blush log cabin quilted and bound this week.  I am so thrilled with how this quilt finished up and can not wait to see how it washes.

I quilted Blush using the diagonal lines of the log cabin block as a guide.   I love how the how this simple quilting adds extra interest to the log cabin.

I must admit I am looking forward to trying some of the free-motion techniques I learned last week at the PMQG Meet Up, but I have a few weeks before my wrist is up for the challenge.  So the next few quilts will involve straight lines in some shape or form and in the meantime I will do my free-motion exercises in my new graph paper note-book.  As instructed by Rachel (of 2nd Ave Studios) I will be using pen only for the doodling. No erasing.

I found the perfect fabric piece in my stash for the back of this quilt – the Weekend by Erin Morris fabric worked perfectly with a little bit of pink supporting fabric.

The final touch was a solid binding in Magenta which just bought the whole quilt together.

Now I am just a few stitches away from finishing my Yummy quilt so it is back to the sewing machine.

I am linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts and TGIFF.

This week I managed to get my “Shell logo” inspired flying geese quilt top finished.  By the time I had finished laying out this quilt top it had earned the name “Lost Geese”, can you guess why?

Yep is it a little crazy… but kind of fun.  Lots of novelty fabric and fun stuff to make the eyes really explore the madness.

I had a lot of fun making the “geese” go all over the place. I love the lack of pattern or rhythm to the piecing (though it frustrated my husband a little).  Too really throw things into disarray I added a smattering of yellow triangles on a red background.  Chaos rules!

I paper pieced these blocks as I love to have sharp clear triangles in my flying geese and paper piecing is the only way I personally can get that precision. My original post has a paper piecing pattern you can grab if you are interested in trying some geese.

This top has been added to the pile that need basting.  I am going to see if I can convince my hubby to help me again this weekend to baste a quilt or two.

For the last four days or so I have been off gallivanting with my husband in Canada.  We took the Thanksgiving break to drive up to Vancouver Island and spend some quality off line time together.   November has been a crazy month with my husband deciding to write a novel in November (nanowrmo) as well as grow a mustache.  This has meant I have not seen much of my him this month and when I have I have not always recognized him!

As we left Portland on our adventure a friend commented that it is great that Nick will not be distracted by writing and I would not be distracted by quilting… my husband just laughed, he knew I had packed this…

My trusty hexagon kit.  Yes I somehow managed to quilt while on vacation in the middle of nowhere.  I industriously made a stack of hexagons…

and also some more flowers…

which will all be added to the ongoing crazy which is my hexagon quilt.

It has grown a little bit since I last photographed it.

There is no rhyme or reason to how I am adding the flowers… I just add randomly.  It is kind of fun.

I am loving making this quilt…though it is slow going.  There is something about hand stitching I find very therapeutic.

I will get back to the sewing machine this week but I am not in a hurry… and if you were curious as to just how dodgy my husband looks with a mustache…..

The answer is very dodgy!

This weeks Paper Piecing Monday is all about the Night Sky.  This week I have and will be playing with the background blocks for my Starry Night quilt.  My strategy is to use all those scrap pieces of patterns I have printed and lying around the office, with most of them so far being 6 inches square.

I started last week with a half log cabin…

and this week I added some paper pieced crazy blocks….

some left over star pattern pieces from Carol Doak’s book…

some strange flower log cabin pattern I found in amongst the paper pile…

and of course there has to be some flying geese….

I have decided to go with the majority of the sky being paper pieced, as it will make piecing the quilt top together much easier.  I find that piecing paper pieced blocks and traditionally pieced blocks together can be fraught with size issues and usually if there is a large enough amount of traditional piecing I remove the paper from my blocks so that everything is “paper less”.  If I am just sashing blocks then the paper stays on… it is the best way to ensure accuracy.

So the sky is underway… and despite the disparate style of blocks, they seem to work together well.

Okay I admit there is an insanity to this activity but it is kind of fun.  There is no right or wrong… just lots and lots of navy blue, and a smattering of purple.  Quilting heaven for me.

Last week saw the start of my new obsession… 12 inch classic blocks that use a simple square block.  This week I have been playing with another block which I have seen called Joy Bell, Salem and St Gregory’s Cross to name just a few….

This block is another easy one to put together.  You will need…

All these components are 4 1/2 inches unfinished and you can find the pattern for the arrow blocks here….arrow block.  And of course the wonderful simple square, which will be in all the blocks here..WQ Simple square block.

When you have made the components the block is easy to put together, row by row.

When I was researching I found so many variations on this pattern… the simple layout above was usually called Joy Bell, and I also made a block using the layout referred to as a Salem block…

There are so many possibilities with this block, so to help with the “playing” process I made a colouring sheet (joy bells color sheet), so that you can come up with your own combinations.  Download the sheet, grab some colour pencils and go to work…

For today’s paper piecing Monday I present the kitty corner block….

And yes that is a kitty in the center of the Kitty Corner… I could not resist.   The pattern is another simple square nine patch block, have I mentioned I am obsessed?

To make this block all you need is the 4 1/2 inch simple square pattern (WQ Simple square block) and the Kitty corner component.

I was a little stuck on putting a kitty in the block, so my alternative block layout is not too much different…

But I think there are more exciting possibilities if you are not cat or fussy cut focused.  I would love to see a block with no white space – with a pattern fabric as the background. Maybe if I get time….

For today’s Paper Piecing Monday block I did something a little different.  The block still uses the simple square block, but only one…

..and yes kitties are still involved.  It follows the rules of the other vintage blocks – 9 patch of four-inch blocks blah blah blah…

The components of the block are…one (1)  WQ Simple square block, four (4) Triangle blocks and four (4) Starpoint component blocks.  Just click on the links to get the PDF of the patterns.

So what did I do different…. I blew this block up to make a 21 inch block.

As the local hospital was now requesting 42 inch square quilts, I thought this would be a great way to make a quick and easy baby quilt… and I was right.

My quilt is unbound, but you get the idea.  Simple pattern, bright solids and you have an easy quilt.  The pattern components are the same but just 7 inches instead of 4…XL Triangle component and XL Star component and of course XL Simple Square component.

Today’s paper piecing Monday block has the best name EVER… yep today I present to you the Rolling Chocolate block…

This is one of my favorite blocks and not just because it has the word chocolate in the title (though that really does help).   I love how the block double frames the fussy cut print.

So here is what you need:

Four WQ Simple square block and four chocolate block components.  Then a center block, fussy cutting is, of course, optional!

The blocks layout with your 4 1/2 inch square in the middle.  For this block you can easily remove the paper from the block components before you sew everything together, if you are so inclined.

And again there are so many variations that you can do with this block.  I have an extra large version of this block underway, and will share the pattern and results when it is done.

In a moment of crazy at the end of last year I decided that I would not start any new projects in January or February this year.  I have so many wips and unfinished quilt tops I thought I needed to do something to clear the backlog.  This “resolution” saw me pulling out some old unfinished blocks this week and getting this quilt top done…

I actually started making these blocks in March of last year.   I had made a 4 inch paper pieced version of this block for the PMQG medallion and then blew the pattern up to 6 1/2 inches to play with. There is a link on my original post to the free paper piecing pattern in two sizes (4 and 6 inch) in you are interested.

So this week I made a pile more blocks and this morning finally got them all wrangled into a top.

The quilt uses the wonderful Constellation range by designer Lizzy House.  I love the fun bright fabrics that Lizzy makes and though I was late to discovering her fabrics, I have been hoarding and using them for a couple of years.  I do not think there is a quilt I have made in the last year or so that has not had Pearl Bracelets in it somewhere.

This range is all about stars and fun Constellations, but you could easily use this pattern in any fabric range…the trick is to make sure you have a nice contrast in your blocks and that you embrace the light and dark fabrics from the range.

To really up the contrast with this top I also pulled in some solid white fabric as well as the white on white Pearl Bracelets.  I also did not shy away from adding a touch of red/purple.  One of the fabrics in the line had a touch of this colour and I thought I would embrace it…just a little.  I used the design rule of three and added three blocks with the purple.

I just love how the quilt seems to sparkle and your eyes are forced to move around the top.    Now all that is left for me to do is remove the paper and quilt this sucker up!

I am linking up today to Crazy Mom Quilts Friday Finishes.

If you are not on Instagram you probably are not aware of the flurry of mini quilt swaps that have been happening over the last year or so.   Hundreds and hundreds of mini quilts have been made a swapped all over the world and people’s homes now have walls adorned in beautiful little quilts.  After resisting for nearly a year, in February I finally signed up for my first mini quilt swap – the Cotton and Steel mini quilt swap.

I shared my first quilt for this swap a couple of months ago, including the paper piecing pattern I used for this quilt on my original post…….

I liked it but I was not exactly what I wanted.  So I went back to the drawing board and came up with this beauty…

I loved making this 15 inch square sampler and shrinking all these quilt blocks down to 3 inches was fun.  Nearly all these blocks were paper pieced as I find it is the easiest way for me to get accuracy at this small size.

I really loved putting this quilt together…and even found some prints I could fussy cut at this small size!

So with my Cotton and Steel mini done I felt the need to sign up for another mini swap… this time the Lizzy House mini quilt swap.  Now Lizzy House is my favorite designer… I love her prints. As so many of my quilts end up going to kids charities Lizzy Houses fun, modern novelty prints were an instant hit with me.

So what do you do when you have a huge collection of fabulous Lizzy House prints… you make hexagons of course…

So this is my Lizzy House mini work in progress.  The day I signed up for the swap I started making hexagons and once I had them all I had a blast arranging and re-arranging them until I had a layout I was happy with.

This quilt has been so much fun to make…though a little tough on my hands as there has been a lot of hand sewing…

I started making this mini before I had my partner details (yes I was that excited!).  After you sign up you get assigned a partner, you get sent a list of likes and dislikes and you can stalk them on Instagram so you can make something appropriate for them.  So as much as I love these hexagons, I was not sure it was totally up my partners alley… so I made another mini…

..which is much more her style. This quilt is uses four different New York beauty patterns… and I love the unity of the similar shapes of the New York Beauty block combined with the disconnect of the different patterns pieces.

I am sure my partner will love which ever mini I end up sending.  I have a couple more weeks before the quilts have to be sent and there is a chance I will change my mind again and make something else.  This is the joy of mini quilts…they are so quick and easy to make.

So I can now say I am a mini quilt addict, though I have controlled myself this month and not signed up for any more swaps…yet.

Yesterday was a public holiday here in the US and I fully embraced the good weather and took the day off…. so no paper piecing Monday this week.  Instead I wanted to share one of the paper piecing projects I have been working on for the last week or so…

I have been making butterfly blocks using Lizzy House fabric and tone-on-tone white scraps.   My obsession with making these blocks took seed when Lizzy’s new fabric line, Natural Histories came out and included this wonderful print…I had purchased a fabulous butterfly pattern a year or so ago from Juliet at Tartan Kiwi so I went to work making blocks.  The pattern, if you are interested, is only $2.50 and can be bought HERE.

The pattern is for a 5 inch butterfly and it takes four parts to make one block….

The more of these I have made the quicker the process has become.  There are some small bits to the pattern but nothing to complex… and I love the end result.

For my butterfly collection I also enlarged the pattern a little.  The yellow butterfly above is the 5 inch block and the green butterfly is what I got when I enlarged the pattern to take up the whole of a 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper.

My finished butterfly collection will have both block sizes and a fun array of colours.  I am using just Lizzy House fabric and trying not to repeat any fabric…and I love how they all look.

This week I finished up my Lizzy House Dinosaur quilt….

Over the summer I taught a wonderful group of young ladies (aged 10 – 14) how to make a quilt.  Blocks from my test run of that class are what made up this wonderfully fun quilt…

The pattern is a simple rail fence variation….

all you do is cut strips 3 inches wide by the length of the fabric (usually 42 inches long)… then you sew four of these strips together… then you cut out 10 1/2 inch blocks… easy peasy.

The highlight of this quilt is of course the dinosaurs…. oh how I love those dinosaurs….

Oh and there is butterflies as well, of course….

A simple backing…..

and binding using a fabulous ombre fabric I found in my stash and a couple of scraps.

And there you have it, a simple fun kids quilt….and I have another quilt done for 100 Quilts for Kids.

Quilt Details:

Name:  Dinosaurs for Everyone
Pattern:  Rail Fence
Fabric:  Lizzy House Natural Histories, Pearl Bracelets and Butterflies
Finished size:  50 x 60 inches

Last weekend my darling husband abandoned me to go on a boys camping trip, and as soon as he had walked out the door I knew exactly what I was doing with my free time….

You see just before DH left I took delivery of the latest Lizzy House range, Lovely Hunt….and I knew that I had to use it immediately so I pulled out ALL my Lizzy House fabric….

…and cut out a 5 inch square from each piece of fabric.  Then, using my hexagon mini for guidance I got to work….

As there was no husband I could keep working without having to pack things away… I had squares and fabric all over the floor…and it took me a couple of days to get all the blocks up…I kept adjusting and rearranging, coming back to the design wall in between other tasks…I finally ended up with this…

The first block I placed was the low volume cats and then I just worked slowly from there.  I tried to tackle one or two colours at a time, making sure that there was a flow to the colours…

Not all the fabric made it into this quilt top…

I only ended up using 168 different fabrics and had about 20 left over.  I could not work out how to make the brown palette work so it did not even get a look in.

A couple of the prints had too much colour variation in them at 5 inches big to make the them work, but all the wonderful blenders…the Pearl Bracelets, the mini bracelets, the Butterflies and the chain links helped make the novelty fabrics play nice.

This quilt is definitely my quilt… it is not going anywhere but onto our couch.  As the weather starts to turn icky here in the Pacific Northwest this quilt will keep me warm and cozy…. all I have to do is finish it up!

Now while I was cutting up my Lizzy Stash I cut an extra fat eight or two for a give away.  By the time I had finished working through my stash I had a stack of 25 different fabrics… including quite a few out of print beauties, as well as some of the new Lovely Hunt….

So if you would like to win this fat eight bundle just leave a comment below, telling me what you would do with this wonderful bundle of colour.  I will draw a winner next Wednesday, and as always the contest is open to my overseas friends too.

This giveaway is closed. Thanks to everyone who entered and congratulations to Linda who won.