It is not quite summer yet but the weather here doesn’t know that and with daytime temperatures in the low 30s (low 90s) afternoons are spent in shade in the garden where the boys can splash around in their paddling pools and stay cool while Mummy sips cold drinks and gets slowly drenched by well meaning little boys and their wet cuddles. Of course one outcome of all this is that Mummy is not getting much sewing time. The evenings aren’t any better, without air conditioning all we can do to keep cool indoors is sit in front of a fan and of course fans and little pieces of material do not go well together.

All of this means that instead of doing much sewing I am playing around with some designing and so this Wednesday my work in progress post is all about the design work I have been doing in preparation for some new quilts.

I’ve been wanting to try paper piecing for a while so my first design had focused on that and resulted in the creation of a pattern for “Star Wheels”. I’ve played around with lots of colour combinations and my first version will be in some fabrics from Kate Spain’s Good Fortune line with accents in Purple and Blue Chill Bella Broadcloth. After many ripped seams and recut pieces of fabric I have managed to piece together my first block segments.

PPBlock1

They are far from perfect, but at least it’s a start. I clearly still have a long way to go in getting to grips with this technique so I think some practice with scrap fabric is in order before I progress any further on this pattern. The finished mini quilt will hopefully look something like this:

KSstar

The second quilt idea I have drafted is a pattern for what will be my Starburst quilt. This will be a much larger quilt, probably around 65″ square.

expstr

I’ve pieced together the first arm of the star and I am very pleased with how it has turned out. It finished up at just over 30″ long, so no fiddly sewing in this design.

Diamond

I then got distracted from any more designing by an email update from Threadbias that announced their latest design contest.

thumb_5fc53aa3cf19fe3672c526fd857bd1cd

Working with Windham Fabrics, Pink Castle Fabrics, and Stash Books Threadbias are holding a design contest featuring Wallflowers – a brand new collection by Allison Harris of Cluck Cluck Sew. To enter the contest all you have to do is be a Threadbias member (it’s free to register) and then use the Quilt Design Tool to design a quilt no larger than 60″x75″ featuring the beautiful fabrics in the Wallflowers collection.

My entry is entitled “Vertical Garden”. I see it as a brickwork quilt top with flowers growing up the “wall” of the quilt.  Ideally the flower petals would be fully lined and only attached at their bases for a 3D effect. The quilting would then enhance the brickwork effect and also add in details of leaves and stems for the climbing flowers. To see a larger version of the design click on the image below and that should bring you to the original contest entry.

e7decd3550f5f28f628ed8475755a956

The competition is open for enteries till July 7th, so why not pop over to Threadbias and try you hand at some designing of your own, or just browse the site and see the whole range of sewing resources available there.

As ever I’m linking up with Lee over at Freshly Pieced. Hope to see you there.

5 thoughts on “Design Time: WiP Wednesday

  1. Really cool paper pieced pattern! Paper piecing takes a lot of repetition to get it down. I say that, but still have trouble after doing a whole quilt with paper piecing and now the Lucky Stars BOM:):) Learn,learn,learn;) I always triple check each piece to make sure it is covering the section.

    Is the Starburst pattern paper piecing as well?

  2. The paper pieced pattern looks great! As does that black+flame starburst! (That first diamond looks tiny — can’t believe it’s 30″!)

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.