Instant Village Winner

It’s the last day of January, and it’s time to draw the winner of my Instant Village Giveaway.

As this was my first drawing ever, I went for the easy solution: numbering all the comments and using Random.org’s Random Number Generator.

Drum rolls please, the winner of the Instant Village Giveaway is

No 50
who is
Brenda of Scraps & Strings


Congratulations to you Brenda; and to all of you who entered, thank you for playing along!

Clara & Fredrikke, The Taupe Twins

The first sample for my Funky Fowl class and pattern from this post is finished. I have had a big grin on my face while working on it. I’m in love.

Clara

Fredrikke
I have given myself permission to cut into my precious stash, including my taupe fabrics. I have never used taupe before, and love how soft they look.

The Orange Purse

I’m the proud owner of a brand new orange purse, ”The Orange Purse” (please notice the capital T), stitched with lots of love, my seam ripper glued to my right hand, lots of frustration, a broken needle and a happy dance.

The purse is made from the orange linen piece from this post. It has been hand quilted with pearl cotton embroidery floss.

It has a quilted lining, a binding on top, and even a zipper for closing. That zipper took forever to sew in, but it’s there, see?
Instead of buying handles, I have made the strap from a belt. A tutorial on how to do this is coming up.

I was probably the last quilter on earth making a purse, but now I have two on my bragging list (first one here). If I was wise enough to use a pattern or tutorial on how to do these things, it would probably have been a piece of cake. Unfortunately I’m the I’ll-figure-it-out type of person. As soon as a question mark enters my brain, it keeps on churning until I have a solution. With quilts this approach works just fine, but add another dimension and I’m practically buzzing. It sometimes keeps me awake at night. I have found that the 3rd dimension is great until you are sewing your lining into it, and I have. Several times.

The good thing is that I now know how to make the silk purse for MIL; I will not reinvent the wheel this time…

Now I’ll add this to Amylouwho’s Sew & Tell, pop over and get inspired!

Make A Heart

The tutorial for making a heart quilt like this and "One World One Heart" is up here.

Have fun!

Heart Quilt top

Top done, me happy!
The columns spent a day on my design wall (flannel sheet which hangs on two nails on top of our dining room art). I tried out several variations, but did not want it too symmetric, so I ended up with this layout.

I spent Monday night power sewing the columns together and pressed the seams yesterday morning. I still have to snip all those little threads peeking up here and there. It’s amazing how much blocks will unravel being handled and moved around for months and months.
It is sooo pretty, I love it!

For the next progress report I will have to get a fleece blanket for backing (this will be a snuggle quilt, and the hearts are already so stiff from fusible), wash it, and baste the top. I hope! Wish me luck! So, how are you doing on your projects; any progress to report?

Ready, set, cut!

The cutting instructions for Mrs Moen Spring Mystery 2010 are posted here, so grab your fabrics and start cutting!

You need to have signed up for the Mystery and gone through the acquired steps in Blogger to log in. Let me know if you have problems signing in. I think we'll leave the few problems with commenting for now; the important thing is that you can read the instructions. You can always contact me by email.

You can still sign up for the Mystery here.

There will not be any intricate piecing; if you can sew along a straight line, you can make this project.

Julie, Michele (thymegardener): I need your email addresses, please.

Added: Sandi, I have problems with your email address.

Welcome, riders of The Magic Carpet

to my blog, Mrs Moen, and thank you for stopping by. It’s very nice to meet you! Feel free to step off the carpet (no shoes please; I have just vacuumed), stay for a while and have a look around. I have hoarded lots of mint flavoured healthy chocolate if you’d like a snack.

I am a quilter and pattern designer, playing with fabric and creating my stuff in Norway

and this is my first year of participating in One World One Heart.

I have created 3 little quilts for my giveaway. For a chance to win one of them you have to leave a comment to this post. Only bloggers please, as this is a blogging event. If you are a no reply blogger, make sure you include your email address in your comment so I can contact you if you should win.

The pieces are very different, so if you have a favourite, I suggest you put it in your comment. I will draw 3 times; the first winner will get his/her favourite (if I know which one it is). The drawing will happen on February 15th at 8pm, Norwegian time, and the winners will be announced here and contacted by email.

“One World One Heart" (ca 10 1/2" * 11")Inspired by the name of this event, I made one world and one heart. The background (representing the world) is built with different coloured scraps, covered with a layer of tulle, and then quilted with straight lines. The heart is made with yarn and embroidery floss, and embellished with buttons in different colours, sizes and shapes (representing the people of the world).The title of the quilt is embroidered by hand.

“Pink Princess" (ca 11" * 9 1/2")The crown is made from scraps that have been stitched together. The quilt is shadow quilted by machine, and embellished with at few buttonsand some fabric covered buttons.

“Penguins in Snowstorm” (ca 7”*13”)This happy, little creature is one of my all time favourites.The quilt is made from scraps and quilted with straight(ish) lines. The lettering is done freehand by machine.


If you are interested in quilting, tutorials will follow on
- how to make a quilt like One World One Heart,
- how to build shapes like the crown, and
- how to make fabric covered buttons.

I’ll try my best to answer any questions you might have while riding the Magic Carpet myself.

Good luck to you all, and enjoy your ride!

Treasure Box

I have collected lots of bits and shapes in this boxand instead of thinking of them as UFOs that I did not manage to finish, they are treasures with which I get to play and use in new work. However, I intend to finish what I once started, so I’ll be working my way through these treasures:

Dresses for "Nothing to wear" quilts. I have enough for a birthday present for a friend who loves dresses and some to spare.

Crowns from some clown quilts I did in 2006. I have used one for one of the One World One Heart quilts.
Leftover squares from the panty bags I made for my parents in 2008. Mom has wished for a big bag for her hair curler thing, so I’ll make one for her for her birthday.
My House Quilt WIP. All the appliqué shapes are ready to be cut out, but there’s a lot of cutting! I think this will be my next Finish It! project.
4 bag blocks from one of my classes and pattern. I will dress them up a bit and make them into a pillow.
Leftover flower blocks that would make a lovely spring table runner.

Leftover strips from the table set in this post, enough for another table runner.

My oval WIP. The ovals are pebble quilted with a piece of batting on the back. I’ll stick to the original plan and make them into a flower wall hanging.

A few Easter eggs ready to appliqué and dress up.

Leftover flower shapes. I think I’ll pair these up with some grey fabrics.

Some head blocks that I started for the Hoffman Challenge in 2006, but I made this instead. I think I’ll stick to the original plan with these and make them into a wall hanging.

Right?

Preparing for the ride

On Monday the One World One Heart blogging event “Riding the magic carpet” will start, so I am prepared and ready to go with 3 small pieces:

“One World One Heart”made from scraps and tulle and yarn and embellishments. It was so much fun to work with, but the embellishing part was so much harder than I expected. A tutorial on how to build a scrap quilt like this will follow later.

“Pink Princess”made with a crown I made some years ago for some clown quilts. The crown is also made from scraps. The quilt is embellished with at few fabric covered buttons; I wanted to add some more lettering, so I ended up with these. They were easy to make and very decorative. A tutorial on how to build shapes from scraps and making fabric covered buttons will follow later.

and finally
“Penguins in Snowstorm”No introduction needed I guess, pretty much the same as this one. Inger Marie – this is in your honour!

Are any of you going to ride the Magic Carpet?

Now I’ll add this to Amylouwho’s Sew & tell Fridays.

Still growing

Making progress on the hand quilted linen pieces:

One (from this post) all grown up and ready to be made into a purse.I have bought batting and all, and hope to be finished by next Friday when husband and I will go out.

One barely started. This will be a pillow for daughter, so I’ll add pink between the lines.The bright red orange does still not photograph well no matter what kind of light I try.

Heart Quilt progress

I have made a lot of progress on my Finish It! project, The Heart Quilt, the last week.

The threads have been tied and cut off and the blocks that were too large has been cut down to the proper size. The few blocks that were too small have been put aside for another project.

I sorted all the blocks by value and made 9 piles with 12 blocks in each. The last couple of days I have been sewing them into columns. I had to get a new sewing machine in between (noisy machine, have been fixed, came back even noisier, fixed again, sewing with noisy machine for 2,5 years, getting even more noisy, I'm sick of it, it needs service, I need quiet back up machine, I buy new one, the end), but the columns are ready for the design wall.
I love vertical quilts! They are easy to design and easy to put together:

Sort all your blocks by value.

Make piles of blocks with similar value; add some “crossovers” for interest if you like.

Work on one pile at the time: arrange the blocks, and piece them together into a column.

Do the same with the next pile, and the next until all the columns are done.

Arrange the columns on a wall or the floor and move them around until you are happy with the arrangement (much easier than moving blocks).

Piece the columns together.

I made “Class Picture” this way.