Scraps to you too

I have got two stacks of strings sitting right here in front of me. I signed up for Stitched in Colour's Scrap Attack (String Fever) (http://www.stitchedincolor.com/2013/04/scrap-attack-string-fever.html?m=1) back in early April, totally clueless regarding how spring would be like time wise. It's only a string quilt, no big deal, right??

Well, a month and a half later and with only a week to go, it's about time to get started. Solid strings from the Spring in my step quilt and recycled strings from the Watever quilt. Hopefully a match made in heaven, possibly not.

You'll never know if you don't try, right, and it's only the top that needs to be finished.

Thanks for stopping by!

Treasure Box update

I thought it was time to do a little update on the Treasure Box which I blogged about in this post back in January 2010 (really, has it been that long?). The box was far from empty when I revisited it a few weeks ago, but quite a few treasures have been used. Click the links to go to the original posts.

Some of these

became this "Nothing to wear" birthday present for my sister

one of these

became this Little Princess quilt for my book, Gledesspredere

some of these

were made into this travel set for my mother

this bag

turned into these Happy Houses which are also in my book

 

one of these

turned into this small quilt for the Monthly Design Challenge

and these

were used on this "Circle of flowers" quilt which was published in Quiltemagasinet.

 

Not bad I’d say. Now, what to do with the rest of them, what to do, maybe I should search for more treasures to fill it back up, I need a distraction.

Do you keep a Treasure Box with bits and pieces to be turned into something useful? Whether yes or no – happy treasure hunting!

Hipp hipp hurra

A few shots from Friday's celebrations.

Watching the parade. Grandbaby with his new pinwheel. He managed to sleep through most of it, holding on to that thing as if his life was depending on it.

Grandson with his new whistle. Noisy thing which he absolutely loved.

Cake back home

Chocolate anyone?

MIL's 17. mai quilt made by yours truly years ago.

Crazy morning getting the boys ready, tired feet, too much sugar, tired grandma.

Hip hip hurrah!

Happy Norway Day

Happy 17th of May everyone! Today we celebrate the 199th anniversary of the Norwegian constitution being signed by 100andsomething citizens at Eidsvoll. I have been revisiting this era of our history lately, but I’ll spare you from a history lesson today (even though I’d love to with today being Norway Day and all). You can see my old posts about our National Day here, here and here and our bunads here.

Welcome to my blog, Mrs Moen. This is the space where I share my process and projects and I love connecting with creative souls from all over the world. I am first of all a quilter and I enjoy crafts like knitting and mixed media. I am also a quilt book author, quilt class teacher and quilt pattern designer. If you would like to know more about me, you can click the about tab on the top.

I am participating in the Blogger’s Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side this week and I am happy to share this quilt called “The Reef of Re” with you all after sharing just a little snippet in this post.

The quilt was made for The Norwegian Quilt Association’s (NQF) 25th anniversary challenge: Joys of quilting through 25 years. The quilts were exhibited at their annual meeting back in March and the 25 quilts that got most votes will be exhibited at NQF’s booth at The Festival of Quilts in Birmingham UK in August.

The quilts should be 25”*25” using only the colours of NQF logo’s – red, white, blue and black. It will be fun to see the exhibition in Birmingham, and as far as I know, my quilt will be there.

The restricted colour scheme was the biggest challenge for me, but I knew which technique I wanted to use. I have been having lots of fun with what I’m calling “Painting with fiber”, and I wanted to use only recycled and repurposed materials.

So, my mother’s old Christmas table cloth became the background, and I started cutting. There was no rotary cutter involved, only scissors. There are a lot of different materials in this quilt which has been quilted very closely and hand embellished.

I enjoyed the process very much indeed, but had a hard time calling it done - until the air-bubbles-beads were attached. It was my mother that got me onto the reef idea in the first place, so thank you mom!

The binding and backing fabric is from a recycled duvet cover. This is one of the first times I have cut the binding on the bias, but the stripes looked so much better this way. The re-words were printed onto Lutradur and attached by hand

and the label made in Excel and printed onto a fabric sheet. The artist’s statement says “One of my greatest joys of quilting is transforming the castoffs of others into pieces of beauty. The quilt is made from recycled and repurposed materials only including my mother's old Christmas table cloth.”

Photographing the quilt properly turned out to be a challenge. As the deadline was in January, the light (and weather) was an issue. The one day it was not raining or blowing too much, the sun was shining and turning everything blue, so I had to take it inside even though the rod bended and disturbed the squareness of the quilt. You can see the colour difference between the home print (vintage printer) and the photo place.

Blogger’s Quilt Festival Stats:
Finished quilt measures : 25"*25"
Special techniques used : Painting with fiber
Quilted by : Myself
Best Category : Art quilt

You can check out the rest of the participating blogs here

Thanks for stopping by!

Have a wonderful Norway Day, and see you all later!

Touchy feely

So maybe I’m not a touchy feely kind of person, but lately I have been playing with my little collection of hand dyed ribbons. Literally touchy and feely.

This was the last of a few Etsy purchases from the beginning of 2012 when I spent my share of hours browsing Etsy. The ribbons are from Abby&Ellie and are just gorgeous. I filled the non-taxable quota of NOK 200 (approx USD 30 with the current exchange rate) within a few minutes. Excellent service, excellent products, no affiliation.

If you are wondering about the tax thing, here in Norway we may import goods up to NOK 200 without having to pay VAT and fees, so I try to keep my purchases within this limit most of the time. The USD/NOK rate changes from month to month, even from day to day, but usually NOK 200 is somewhere between USD 30 and 40.

I have been saving my precious ribbons for something special for all these months, but now I feel like creating that special something just so I can embellish it with, yes, you guessed it, hand dyed ribbons. The more I need to finish a project, the more drawn I am to start something new. Go figure.

Tomorrow is Norway Day, and I have a few things to get sorted before I pick up the grandboys for their weekly Thursday sleepoveer - like watching the pre-Norway Day kindergarden parade. We get to spend tomorrow morning with them, dressing them up in their bunads and watch the 17. of May parade. Friday mornings rock!

Have a wonderful day!

Hexie Love

Did you know you can do almost anything with simple hexagon shapes? Forget grandmother’s flower garden for a moment and try out something totally different. Borrow a star or hexagon pegboard from your young ones’ toy box and play around with different coloured Hama beads. Or even better, make it a collaborating project; those round beads will magically transform into hexagons when ironed.

You’ll be amazed what great layouts that may come out of a few minutes of play. I’m totally feeling inspired!

Next time: snowball love

Six

As of today husband and I are the proud grandparents of a 6 year old.

A never ending journey of joy and mess and games

and sports and running and jumping

(picture borrowed from kindergarden)

Happy birthday young man!

Whatever, The setup

I have done a little remodelling of our dining room table, transferring half of it into an ironing board. Having learned from previous Oh... moments (it turns out that neither our tables nor the floor take heat (nor safety pins for that matter) very well, who knew), I have padded the surface properly and then some.

One double layer of felted wool, one layer of really heavy weight felted wool, and one double layer of heavy cotton fabric. I’m not using steam, and have checked if the heath travels through all the layers, and it doesn’t.

The appliqué pattern is blown up into the right format. I often find that the first sketch I make is the best. No matter how many times I try, I never seem to get it totally right again. Like ever. This time I transferred that first sketch onto semi transparent paper, and borrowed a copier to do the blowing up part.

I know, the picture looks a bit like a murder scene, but I promise, it won't in the end. The sketch was maybe 4” tall and needed to be 38”, so there were quite a few A3 sheets and yards of scotch tape involved in making the simple pattern.

The Whatever quilt will be an exhibition piece, so I will only be able to share snips and pieces from now on. This, however, is my "paint" - plastic bags with scraps of sheer fabrics which will be transformed into appliquê, one layer at a time. This will be the fun part.

Knowing myself, I will need to let it percolate a few times during the creative process, but hopefully it will be finished on time. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, nothing gets those creative juices flowing like a real life deadline.

Thanks for stopping by!

Whatever; The background

The Whatever background is finished and all ready for play. It still needs properly pressing, but all the blocks are in the right place, and I'm happy to say - without any unstitching.

Don’t all the old recycled fabrics look great together? It’s hard to imagine these being smelly old household items in a thrift shop a decade and half ago. The tanned stripy one and the purple chequered one both comes from a duvet cover that had a different print on each side. To get an even bigger variety of fabrics, I over dyed pieces of both (and quite a few more fabrics) with tan using the washing machine. 4 different fabrics from one duvet cover is a good outcome, and I have used most of them up already.

The solid tan is from a washed out, well, very washed out sheet. I discarded the reverse blocks as they were a bit on the flimsy side around the edges. I used to have the busy flowery fabric with blue flowers in pink too.

The green Asian style fabric is from a heavy weight curtain. It was impossible to press the seam allowances properly, but that’s ok. I think my favourite one would be the white chequered fabric with the tiny roses. I don’t use white a lot, but I really should, they make everything so clean and crisp.

Do you use thrifted fabrics in your quilts, and why – or why not?

Whatever; The piecing

To make sure I would not mess up the far-from-perfectly-balanced layout for the Whatever quilt, I made one stack of blocks from each column and numbered them. I’m all for chain piecing, but not when the time pressure is up and there’s only one right way to put each block. I am occasionally directionally challenged, and when I come down with a touch of that, there’s no way to foresee the outcome.

Ages ago husband and I wallpapered a room and even though there were only 4 ways to turn the double sided wallpaper (up and down on the back and front), after 6 wrongs, we finally got it right. Most of the time. Now imagine going through that process in a whole living room. No wonder I do my piecing block by block when in a hurry.

Finished columns, still numbered, and ready to stitch together. The perfect way to spend a few hours on a Saturday I’d say.

Have a wonderful weekend!