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“….

This week as I put my paper piecing block together, I thought of what I have learnt this year doing these blocks… and thought I would share some of my tips.

So this week I choose another of Julie @ 627Handworks great blocks.  The block, Siouxsie, is one that Julie has put up on Craftsy and is block 13 of her Block Rock’n series.  At a $1.00 for the pattern is it a bargain.  You can also download Julie’s free Block Rock’n blocks at Craftsy as well.

Tip #1…   I always download the pattern to my desktop before I print.  This is the best way to guarantee that you are printing to the correct scale.  I had some fun issues printing directly from the website early on in Paper Piecing Monday’s life, which resulted in me have to remake some blocks.  Also make sure that you tick the “print in original size” box in your print dialogue box.

Tip #1a… I use normal photocopy paper for printing my patterns.  It is cheap and easily available.

Tip #2… If the block is complex or I am making it complex, I use coloured pens to mark up my paper pattern.  This way I do not lose track of what colour goes where.

Tip #3… I always glue down my first piece of fabric.  I go through so much Elmers glue it is not funny.  I find it easier to align the first set of seams with one of the fabric pieces already stuck in place and pins cause fabric bunching which is annoying.

Tip #4…  I am always generous with my seam allowance on my scraps.  I have found it is much easier to work with BIG scraps or pieces of fabric than it is to work with precisely cut pieces of fabric.  In paper piecing you get all sorts of weird shapes and having an abundance of extra fabric means that you can get even the weirdest shapes to work, without having to re-sew the block over and over.

Tip #5… Do all sewing with a small stitch length.  I usually do my paper piecing stitching on a length of 2 – 2 1/2.  This helps make ripping the paper off at the end easier, but also ensures the integrity of the sewing.  Ripping the paper off the block can cause stitches to loosen and the smaller stitches helps with this immensely.

Tip #6…  I use scissors to trim my excess fabric, not a rotary cutter and ruler.  I find it quick and easy – I can do it while still sitting beside my machine.  No one ever sees the backside of the block, so I do not mind if it is a little messy.

Tip #7…. Your iron is your friend. I iron all my seams/pieces to get them to lie flat.  For this block I sewed the first two fabric pieces together on all the pattern sections and then stood up, ironed all the seams and then sat down and sewed the next fabric piece to the pattern.  For last week’s fox block I used my mini iron to sew as I went.  Whatever way all seams get ironed.

Tip #8… Before I sew together the finished paper pattern pieces, I  rip the paper off any bits of the pattern that are bulky or intersect.  This makes the block less chunky and means my sewing machine is less likely to hiccup when it hits the multiple layers of fabric/paper.  With this pattern the center pieces of the block needed to be pulled.  I leave enough of the paper so that you can still see your sewing lines.

Tip #9… Tweezers are an essential paper piecing tool.  When you are removing the paper pattern at the end of the process, the big bits are easy but tweezers are the only way to get those pesky little bits of paper that are hiding in the corner of the block.

Tip #10… If at all possible train your husband, children or friend to help you pull the paper off your finished quilt top.  It really does make life easier.

First of all I have to explain, for those of you that do not know me, I have the attention span of a gnat.  I get bored easily and always have more ideas than I have time.  With this revelation in mind I hope you will forgive me for putting aside my pastel paper piecing blocks and starting a new project… Starry Night.

I had the idea for this series of blocks the other day while watching an episode of “Face Off” and after seeing Quilts of a Feathers fabulous WIP Tardis quilt, and just had to run with it. Then I discovered that Quilting on the Square had added a six more free blocks to it’s Compass collection and it seemed like Kismet.  I promptly picked the Rolling Compass block pattern (block3countryregister) and went to work.

Another fairly simple star pattern with just 40 pieces, but once again the scraps make it look more complex than it is.  I think this is going to be a fun quilt to make.

ps.  last night my husband did a very technical spreadsheet thingy and choose a winner of Give Away. Congrats to Melintheattic.  A bundle of fun goodies will be winging their way to you soon.  And thanks to everyone for the kind comments left on the site… made me feel all mushy.

After some of the discussions about the complexity (or not) of last week’s block, I decided to do a really simple block this week.

This block, which measures only 8″ x 8″, was made using a free paper piecing pattern by Moira McSpadden at The Quilted Snail.   I thought my Starry Night quilt would work best if I vary the size of some of the blocks – my usual Paper Piecing Monday size is 12″ x 12″.   This block only uses a mere 18 pieces of fabric and is really quick and easy to make.

It is so easy to make I made two…

If I am honest I made this block first but was not completely happy with it so made the other version.

After last weeks easy (read 18 piece) blocks I decided to up the fabric piece count with this weeks star.

This fabulous star is another free pattern from Quilting on the Squares new bonus compass star patterns.  The Cactus Star Block star is a 64 piece star, with enough complexity in the colouring that I had to resort to coding my pattern…

I must admit more and more orange is creeping into these stars…along with a touch of dark purple here and there.  I just can not seem to limit myself too much colour wise, particularly with these more complex blocks.  They work best, I think,  if you have variety in your colours.

…deep breath…. here goes….I am a messy quilter.  You may not be able to tell from what I have put up on the site but in the last couple of weeks the truth has become harder and harder to ignore.

So what has forced this revelation…. Quilting Bees. Over the last couple of weeks I have been getting quilt blocks from around the country – I was “Queen Bee” for both ScrapBeeLicous Bee and Do.good.stitches Hope Circle.

So here is the evidence, as I see it.  Exhibit A…. a block received for the Do.good.stitches Bee.

Please note the neat seams.  The lack of loose threads. The overall precision and beauty of the back of the block.

Now Exhibit B…. my Icky Thump block for the same quilt.

It is down right embarrassing.    In my defense I taught myself to quilt and never knew that you should carefully cut threads.  Since seeing my fellow quilters blocks I have started taking more care with my threads but I still trim my paper piecing with scissors.

With these startling revelations and confessions, there is only one saving grace…. you really can not tell from the front of the quilts.

When setting this block for the Bee, I did not realise that most of my fellow Hope Circle had not paper pieced.  I believe I drove a couple of them to drink.  It really did not occur to me that there are people out there that have not tried paper piecing -  I wrongly assumed that it was a technique commonly used.

I set this block because it was an easy block to do, but very very effective.  Some of you may recognize the inspiration from a post earlier in the year.

I made this block using Julie at 627handworks free Icky Thump paper piecing pattern.  I loved it so much and was determined to make a full quilt in this colour way.

The quilt  is coming together nicely… I am still awaiting a few more blocks in the post and then I can put the top together.  The finished top will be 4 blocks wide x 5 blocks long…. and fabulous.

Okay I am getting a little obsessive over these blocks…I am just loving how they are turning out and can not wait to start playing with them on my design wall.  This week I add another fun one to the collection.

This is another pattern from Quilting on the Squares free Bonus Star collection.  The pattern is called Diamond in the Rough and comes in at a measly 48 pieces.

I am hoping with next weeks block to have enough stars done to start playing with layout.

I am very very very  pleased to say that my pink and green triangle quilt is finally all done.  I have procrastinated with this quilt in new and exciting ways over the last 6+ months… but she is now completed and I can move on with the rest of my life.

I must admit, in the spirit of full disclosure, that I had planned for this quilt to be bigger than what she ended up as, but I got to the point where I had had enough and just went with the blocks I had made.  Her finished dimensions are 45 inches x 50 inches which is a smallish kids quilt.

I first posted this block way back in April… I had been given a small scrap pile of olive green fabric and wanted to do something with it.   Hot pink fabric was chosen to go with the olive and a triangle paper pieced pattern from the “Modern Blocks” book was chosen.   I was so optimistic with that first post I titled it “Triangle Love”.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, when I decided to bite the bullet and finish this sucker… but now I was referring to it as “Triangle Trauma“.  Oh what a difference time makes….

Now all is said and done I am really happy with how this quilt turned out…but will not be jumping into another triangle quilt for a while!   For the backing of the quilt I used a piece of Densye Schmidt which worked perfectly with the quilt top.

For the quilting I selected a random triangle, quilted around it and then radiated the quilting out from there.  It is straight line quilting but with a twist.  I went with pink thread of course, because you can never get enough pink in my opinion!

I nearly went with pink binding but opted for a Kona olive green instead – I think it made the pink pop a little more.

So now that I have finished a quilt, I am now, under Ashley’s mum’s rules, allowed to start another one.  I have a pattern picked out and fabric pulled… stay tuned.

Quilt Details:

This week I decided to play a little with my Starry Night blocks, that is put them up on the design wall and see how it was all coming together.  But before I started “playing” I made this block….

Yes, another pattern from Quilting on the Square’s free Bonus Compass blocks… this time I went with their twinkle pattern.   A lovely little pattern taking just 32 pieces.

As I started pinning the blocks up on my design wall I quickly realised I needed some more variety in sizes for my stars… so just for fun I made this “little” variation on my twinkle block.

This mini twinkle star uses Quilters Cache’s free eight pointed star pattern.    I printed this pattern out at a smaller size than the pattern dictates and as I am not worried about being too accurate with the star sizes I let my printer do the re-sizing calculations.

When I was finished with both these blocks, I tacked them up on my wall…. now this is really just a very very rough work in progress, just so I could see how the blocks looked together and so I could work out what I needed to be doing with my patterns going forward.

I have a way to go… but I think it is coming together nicely.  I have worked out that I want more variety in my stars and more variety in my sizes.

I woke up this morning to find that Portland is covered in a lovely layer of snow.  This does not happen often, and as an Aussie it still absolutely delights me.  I was jumping round the house opening all the curtains and gleefully claiming “ohhh it is so pretty”.  Then I realised I needed to photograph my quilt this morning.  Glee gone.

As much as I love snow I am not a huge fan of being cold.  But I rugged up, 4 layers deep, put on some gloves and bravely ventured out to photography my just finished quilt top.

This was the perfect quilt to photograph in the snow, and I have decided to call the quilt “Icicles”…it seemed like a fitting title.

This quilt is a Do.good.stitches project.  I recently joined the “Hope Circle” and when it was my turn to set the block I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

We used Julie at 627Handworks “Icky Thump” block – one of the easiest and most effective paper piecing patterns EVER.  You can find the free pattern here  and my original post here.I love how much variety there is in this quilt.  If I had made all the blocks myself the quilt top would not be this interesting – I would have stuck with light greys and turquoises.  The wonderful ladies of my quilt circle instead provided me with such wonderful blocks, such variation in greys that the quilt really sings.  I can not wait to get the back made and the quilt finished.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I had struggled to find some smaller blocks for my Starry Night quilt, so I have been working on designing some smaller blocks for my quilt.  This week’s block is a simple 8 inch block…

You can find the pattern I made here…WQ Starry Night Block 1.  It is a simple 40 piece block with no really small pieces (which is the problem I found with shrinking a lot of the more complex patterns).

As a side…when I ran my test block I did not number the pattern, but I promise the attached pattern sheet has numbered pieces…promise.

Paper Piecing Monday was delayed a little this week by a stonking cold that took me out of action for a few days.  I am feeling a little more human today and managed to get this simple little star block made, thru the Dayquil/Lemsip haze…

This block is 6 inches by 6 inches and was again designed in response to my search for smaller star blocks for my Starry Night Quilt.  This is a much simpler block than last week, I got a ribbing for calling last week’s block “simple” at 40 pieces.  This week’s 20 pieces is definitely simple…right!  You can find the pattern here…Starry Night WQ block 2.

I like the 4 triangle piece pattern of this block and may fiddle some more with it to get some different kind of stars.    Next week I am going to scale up and aim to get a 10 inch block designed and made… stay tuned.

This week I was just not able to make myself do another blue block… so to mix things up I thought I would make another Neon block.  I recently inherited some Michael Miller Neon scraps and a couple of unused Neon blocks and thought I would try to make a neon quilt for the PMQG charity drive.  So here is my first contribution to the quilt…

This is pattern is not too complex but I like how the star seems to have a frame.  I did manage this week to get all my points to align and I really learnt from last weeks palava, which means the pattern is ready for use.  You can find it here…WQ Neon Star block 1.

I am taking a brief break from my Starry Nights and I am looking forward to doing some non-star paper piecing blocks for this Neon quilt.

What more could you want?

This paper piecing Monday sees me full embracing the Neon crazy.   In my defense I did not start this but I am definitely going to finish it.  This week I worked out exactly what direction I wanted to take with this quilt and so designed this block with my new “cunning plan” in mind.

You see this quilt was inspired by two “orphan” blocks that I inherited when I took over my role at Portland Modern Quilt Guild.  I hate to see fabulous blocks go to waste, and love the challenge of finding a way to use them.  I warn you I inherited a lot of weird and wonderful things and you will see more of them over the next 12 months.

The two blocks I started with were 11 inch neon pink and grey.  I do not know who made them, but they are fabulous.  My plan is to border the grey blocks with 1 inch of white sashing and make a checker board style quilt with alternating 11 inch grey blocks and white border blocks.

So for this week’s block I designed a snowball style block, with a larger than usual white border.  I am loving this block and can not wait to make it in my traditional scrappy style.  The block is a fun 40 pieces and was really simple to whip up.  The 12 inch pattern can be found here…WQ Neon Block 2.

I also wanted to thank everyone for their kind comments about my “magazine debut”.  I quilt because I love (in a crazy insane way) but I never thought other people would enjoy what I made as much as they have.  I continue to be surprised by the response my quilts get, touched by the comments people leave and grateful for the friendships I am making.

Thank you.

Last weekend, while my husband was away on a “dude’s weekend” I took the opportunity to clean up my stash a little. Needless to say there was fabric from one end of the house to the other… it looked like a fabulous colourful fabric bomb had gone off. During this process I realized I had somehow accumulated a decent size stash of brown fabric. I am still not sure how this happened as brown is definitely not a colour I use at all, ever, but now I had found it I of course had to use it.

I love a good challenge and finding good uses for brown fabric is a perfect challenge for 2014. Fired up it took me less than 5 minutes to find some inspiration in my house, and the game was on.

This inspiration, a glass vase….

became this fabric pull…

The pattern I chose was a fabulously simple free paper piecing number from Quilters Cache… the Fly Foot 2 .

Which when you do alternating colour blocks turns out like this…

These blocks when added to other blocks make this amazing plaid like pattern…

For the first time in my quilting life I have used brown as a predominate colour and I love the results. There will be more brown combinations in my future… so stay tuned.

This week I am quickly jumping back into my Starry Night quilt, mainly because I think I am close to having all the blocks I want/need…plus I am slightly addicted to the blue-yellow contrast.  The result of the weekends playing was this star…

We were snowed in this weekend which allowed me to play a little.  I designed this pattern, a copy of which you can find here Starry Night Feathered but instead of printing it out as I usually do, I thought I would give tracing paper a go.   So I traced my pattern on the paper, using a good old-fashioned pencil and ruler.  This is definitely the down side to tracing paper.  I had previously tried to get my inkjet printer to take the extra thin tracing paper but it was not having any of it.

So the advantages of tracing paper are…

(1)  it is thin enough that lining up your fabric is easy

(2)  the thinness of the paper also means that you get less bulk where seams meet and

(3)  my stitches had less give when the paper is remove and the paper was easier to remove.

The downside…

(1)  if you can not get it to print on your printer, tracing the pattern is a laborious task

(2)  I missed the extra sturdiness that photocopy paper gives your pattern, particularly when sewing the pattern pieces together.  My pattern kept flopping over and moving.

(3)  it is more expensive per sheet and not as easy to find as photocopy paper.

Okay the experiment is over and so is the snow.  I am going to stick with photocopy paper… and go back to using my sheets of cardboard as a background to my blocks instead of wonderful snow.

This week I decided to play with turquoise and my all time favorite neutral, navy blue.  There was something about this colour combination and snow that just seemed to work.  First I raided my scraps and then pulled this bundle from my stash…

I had used navy and turquoise together before, but with “radiant orchid” and some electric blues thrown into the mix.

This time I wanted to keep it simple, clean, cool.   I choose an easy block called “World Without End”.  This classic quilt block dates back to the 1900′s  and I found some wonderful old examples when searching on-line, including one from the Spencer Museum of Art.  For my project I used Quilters Cache’s free paper piecing pattern which you can find here.

 This is another quick, fun block that packs a punch, and is perfect for scraps.  I just loved how the strong colour contrast with this pattern.

I was surprised how big my turquoise stash was and it has been great fun cutting into it for this project.  I have added this to my list of “must finish” for 2014… a list that keeps getting bigger.  I  need some sewing fairies pronto!

Today’s paper piecing Monday is a “three for the price of one” deal.  I got a little carried away doing my neon blocks last week and thought I would share all the blocks I made.  First up is…

A flying geese block, of sorts.  I wanted a graphic block that was not a star and this is where I ended up.  I think you can have a lot of fun with this block, depending on how you choose to colour it and lay it out.

It is a pretty simple block and you can find the paper piecing pattern here…Neon Lost Geese.  Next up I did another graphic block…

I know I am going to revisit this block because I am dying to make this pattern with a more scrappy approach and fussy cut centers.  Too much fun.  I have made a 6 x 6 inch pattern for this block, Neon Square block but I think I will enlarge the block for my scrappy version.

The last neon block I made this week was a re-do of a paper piecing pattern I made last year…

Yep I revisited the marvelous Julie @ 627Handwork’s Marley block.  You can find the free pattern here.  This pattern is fabulously bold, geometric and perfect for this quilt sampler.  I now have only two more blocks to go before I can finish this quilt up.

This week I went totally girly with my colour play.  I love pink and love using pink…

Example One…

Example Two…

Example Three…

Example Four…

I could go on but I think you get the picture… so this weeks challenge was to try a new pink combination, one that I was a little different from my norm.  The end result was this totally girly fabric pull…

Which when combined with a simple spiderweb pattern from Quilters Cache became this 12 inch block…

Which, when joined with other spiderweb blocks begins to look like this…

Totally deliciously pretty I think, but I am a little biased!

The last week or so I have been playing with a different kind of colour combination…one that really has not got a lot of “colour” in it.  My inspiration was a very old photo that hangs on our living room wall…

(Please note..I can neither confirm or deny that I am in this photo).

Anyway I have always loved black and white photographs, which really are more grey and white than black and white, and thought why not play with greys in a quilt.  The end result was this block…

I used another fabulous free paper piecing pattern from Quilters Cache called Atlantic Sea.   The block pieces look rather strange and a pattern is not immediately obvious.

But when you put more and more of the blocks together you get this wild, slightly mesmerizing pattern.

I think as this quilts grows more and more patterns and shapes will become visible.  It is really a little trippy but cool.