Friday 17 May 2013

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!

14 comments:

  1. Hi Nina Lise! This is beautiful, exiting, interesting and I love the way you use different materials! Happy Norway Day! x Teje

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  2. Love this quilt. Happy Norway Day!

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  3. This is stunning. Happy Syttende Mai!

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  4. Gorgeous!! So interesting and dynamic.

    Happy Norway Day!

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  5. Beautiful quilt. Your work is truly amazing and inspirational! I especially love your stitching.:)

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  6. I hope I get to see this fascinating quilt in Birmingham.

    Happy Norway Day! I hope you've had a good day.

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  7. Love your quilt, Nina. Lots of interesting bits.
    Hugs

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  8. Happy Norway day to you too. It is always fun to see how you reuse stuff and all your embellishments. Beautiful!

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  9. Your quilt is amazing! I love it!
    Happy Norway Day!
    Angela

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  10. Great effect with the different textures and limited palette

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  11. I love this!! You are second to none in the "RE" category. No one recycles fabric like you do!! Well done on this restricted challenge palette.

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  12. wow! the texture in your quilt is astounding! you just blew me away.

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  13. I makes me think of poppies lots of poppies. The texture looks amazing would love to look closer and touch it!! Gorgeous!!

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  14. Very cool! I love the round shapes

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