Little Thursday Tip

I don’t pin as often as I should, but when I do, I often put my pins away from where the seam will go so that I don’t have to stop and remove them while stitching.

When the fabrics are not too slippery or there are points that need to be matched 100% right to stop the world from going under, it works quite well for me.

Colour study: Yellow

Hello there, I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays! We got back this morning from 5 days at our cabin with the boys, and it was lovely. Busy and lots of fun. I was planning to do some work and write some posts while I was up there, but the Wi-Fi was overloaded after a recent upgrade, and 3G isn’t really an option in our neck of the woods (literally), so Easter was basically offline at our place.

I had prepared some hand work before we left, and a little fabric play goes a long way. Lighting is an issue, so I brought the rechargeable Ottlite desktop lamp which I don’t need at home anymore; sitting at the back of the couch, it made all the difference.

Scraps from the yellow & orange scrap bin - I use too little yellow in my work and want to use it more in all its glorious tints and shades and hues and neighbours and cousins. This is one way to make friends with the colour yellow, simply use it - cut it, play with it, stitch it, enjoy it.

The “neutral” background – the sleeve of a recycled shirt, layered with batting and recycled backing, and basted by machine.

I had no plan really, but one night when the boys were put to bed, there was a cutting frenzy going on using my rather dull scissors. Many scraps were used as they were, others were cut into suitable sizes. Edges were often left untrimmed, giving some extra texture. Most fabrics are only used once, but wherever needed, I made second cuts to fill in small gaps. 

When everything was in place, the pieces were tacked to the background with a regular glue stick. All good fun and done in a jiffy even though the result looks balanced enough I’d say.

While I had yellow thread i my sewing kit, I decided to stitch them down with hot pink thread. Just stitching basic running stitches through all the layers, one piece at the time. 

The recycled base was ever so soft and easy to stitch through.

While I want to keep the colour mostly on the yellow side, I am planning to do fan quilting with blue thread. I think it will be wise to do some marking first, at least in the very beginning.

I haven’t been doing hand stitching for a long time, and it’s one of the things I’d like to do more; so handy to bring along and to put in some work when you have company.

Thanks for stopping by:)

Improving: Floating squares

One of my goals this year is to learn new things. I know I do new things all the time, but those are things I think of myself. Now I would like to learn from other people’s processes too. I first noticed a book reading up on Audrey’s blog Quilty Folk where she was working on improve quilting techniques, and the book kept popping up at other blogs as well -The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters by Sherri Lynn Wood. 

Improv quilting has not really been much on my radar, but it looked like fun, so I ordered the book and invited two of my friends who I knew would like to play along to join me in a study circle. I haven’t done any of those since I was a student, but I used to love group work, and thought it would be much more fun to do it together.

We had our first meeting this weekend, and agreed on some guidelines for our first score – the Floating squares.
Fabric 1: 12”*12”
Fabric 2: 12”*20”
Filler fabric: Unlimited
All of Fabrics 1 and 2 to be used up.

It was such a fun exercise, not using a ruler and all. It is safe to say that my cuts got straighter during the process, and the result is surprisingly flat. I was expecting to struggle a bit with the not thinking ahead part as my brain automatically makes order out of chaos starting organizing and calculating things, but I managed to work rather freely.

We'll meet again in a couple of weeks to evaluate the process and plan the next score. This is going to be a fun journey!

Thanks for stopping by!

"The blue hour"

Every year, the European Quilt Association, the association of European national quilt guilds, issues a challenge. A number of quilts from each country will be on show at Festival of Quilts in Birmingham and then tour different countries for 3 years.

The theme this year was “Greetings from...”, a quilt looking like a postcard, measuring 25*35cm (10”*14”), including a post stamp and no visible binding. For a while I wasn’t sure I could finish a quilt in time, but I had to try.

“The blue hour” is inspired by the fjords up north at winter time when the light is blue. I love this part of Norway. The title is a nod to a painting we have at home.

I started with a pieced background 

which I covered with layers of sheers to suggest water and sky. 

The mountains were sketched roughly and transferred to a translucent paper. 

I did not take any pictures during the next steps, but the mountains and their shadow were made from layers of sheer fabrics and appliquéd onto the background.

The snow/ice gave me some problems. It was too white, so I tried a few overlays of blue.

The orange represents the light and warmth from the houses, and is made from gorgeous sari silk scraps. I arranged and rearranged those little pieces more times than I care to remember, but I love the texture of the fraying silk.

My post stamp is the silvery moon. The text is written with a permanent marker and says “Up north, Norway, January 2016”.

I was planning to free motion quilt the piece, 

but in the end I had to add lots of horizontal lines. It did not look right without.

I love how all those quilting lines look and how they blend the different colours and textures together.

Usually I would do the invisible binding from my tutorial here, but with time being an issue, I tried something new. It worked well enough, but I learned a few lessons for next time.

I cut a piece of fabric with the same measurements as the quilt, marked lines on all 4 sides, 

and cut out the centre.

Pinning it to the quilt, right sides together,and stitching all the way around.

Clipping the corners, and folding it over to the back. Folding in the raw edges and stay stitching around the edges with machine.

The edges were then stitched down by hand as for a regular binding.

The quilts were shown at the annual meeting of the Norwegian quilt guild last weekend, and the 16 quilts with the most votes will go to Birmingham.

I’m looking forward for my little tribute to a part of Norway which I love to return home – whenever that might be.

You can see some of my previous EQA challenge quilts here, here and here.

Unloved; Grandmother's garden

Many years ago, I made my first attempt at English paper piecing. I loved it. A bunch of scraps (from this quilt) were cut roughly to shape and tuned into little flowers; a little garden in memory of my grandmother. I had heard that grey thread was a great choice, so that’s what I used, and the templates were printed out and cut apart with scissors. In hindsight not such a great idea, but it gave me a lot of joy at the time. The sides of the hexagons measure approx 1/2".

The flowers were joined with filler hexies from a recycled duvet cover and the whole garden appliquéd onto a piece of white flannel. Why flannel, you may ask, and you can see why here. Anyway, I used one of those awful monofilament threads for the appliqué and have probably not used it since.

I drew some free form lupines, tried out a couple of different sizes, and appliquéd one flower with satin ribbon stem on each side of the garden.

Some free motion quilted flowers and leaves later, and it was done.

Then the story took a wrong turn. Not quite happy with the size, I chopped off a good chunk of the bottom of the quilt. Indeed I did, and with that one cut I made it too small. What I should have done, was to take the thing apart and start over, but I didn't. Instead I added a new quilt-as-you-go style “bottom”, leaving a rather noticeable seam.  The stems were replaced; 

new quilting lines added and the text “In my grandmother’s garden grew lupines” (directly translated from Norwegian; sounds terribly wrong; oh well) was rewritten right on the seam. Might as well enhance the horrid thing, right. You can see the ghost from the previous text right above.

By this time, all I wanted was to finish it, so I secured the edges with bias tape and put it in a frame. After a few years on the wall, it was put away to be forgotten. I was quite happy to see it again, and wanted to use it in a pillow.

The elaborate label which was stitched into the new addendum was unpicked to be saved (inside the pillow case for now), and everything around the garden was chopped off leaving only a ¼” seam allowance. 

It looked better already! I kept one of the lupines though; it’s still hanging in the corner of my design wall.

Adding a simple zipper-closure back, and a new pillow was done. 

Even with the grey thread and the little pieces of flannel showing, I think it looks awesome.

It makes me smile; it’s my grandmother’s flower garden.

The Corner Block Tutorial

Hello there!

The boys are busy playing so I found a window of time to write up a tutorial for the super simple Corner blocks from this post. This is an excellent block for beginners, for playing with pretty fabrics and for scraps. The instruction is for one block; I made two new sets of blocks with which to play for this tutorial, so the colours vary. 

You’ll need two fabrics; one for the corner, and one for the background/pavement. How much contrast you want between them, is up to you.

Measurements finished block: 8”*8”, unfinished; 8 ½”*8 ½”

Cut one 4 ½”*4 ½” square for the corner.
Cut one 4 ½”*4 ½” square and one 4 ½”*8 ½” rectangle for the background.
I cut 4 ½” strips in the full width of the fabric, and cut pieces for several blocks at the time.

Stitch the two squares together,

and then the rectangle on either side of the squares. I don’t press the seams until the block is finished. You've got to live dangerously sometimes, right?

I have alternated stitching the rectangle on the two sides of the squares.You can do this by stitching with the background square on top on some blocks, and the corner square on top on the others. The look of the blocks will be the same.

I have pressed some of the seam allowances this way and some the other.

You can use the blocks as they are for, amongst others, the layouts in the Corner block play post:
Side by side

Square

Question mark

Vertical squiggly line

Horizontal squiggly line

This way and that

Or, you can cut the blocks diagonally and get a totally different look. I always cut blocks from the back to avoid jagged lines when cutting the seam allowances.

Make sure you cut through the spot where the seams meet

You’ll get two sets of triangles – Left ones and Right ones.

One Left and one Right makes these blocks

They can be used in the same layouts as the original Corner blocks.

Two Rights stitched together will give these blocks

and two Lefts will give these blocks.

They will make the same shapes, but move in different directions like the leaning stars

and interlocking pinwheels.

(Rights)

 

(Lefts)

 

I had some fun playing with the Left and Right blocks together, and this was my favourite design. 

I love the strong diagonal lines!

I am quite happy that I revisited those long forgotten blocks and started playing with them. Now it's your turn; consider yourself challenged:)


Thanks for stopping by!