"Soft treasures"

This quilt did not make its way into the world easily, so with a late-but-big Tah Dah, I give you "Soft treasures" (Jan 2014, 65*77cm)

With all the fabrics and notions available to us quilters, it is easy to lose track of the simple joy of creating your own images, so I wanted to go in the other direction using only solid black fabric and colourful thread, and techniques from my free motion quilting class, Quilta Figurer.

The quilt is free motion quilted in various patterns and hand embroidered. Extra texture and depth have been added by playing with the thread tension and adding just a few lines with fabric crayons.

Those of you who read this blog, know that it took more than a few experiments to get the colours

and techniques

and stitches right.

Those of you who do free motion quilting, know that it takes more than a few hours to do such dense quilting.

Those of you who do hand stitching, know that it takes more than a few days to do this much hand stitching.

It did indeed take quite a lot of work to finish the quilt, but the competition for which it was made got cancelled, and after a lot of mishaps on the way to an exhibition, it was finally showed at a “Show & tell”, for half a minute, in a very poorly lit hall, 100 feet away, all crinkled and horrible. Tah dah. I felt crinkled and horrible too.

Hopefully I’ll feel better about the quilt when it gets unpacked in the new house. Maybe I’ll want to take properly lit pictures. At least I can use it as a sample in future Quilta Figurer classes.

I'll keep you updated..

Off we go

I finally got up from the couch and out of the house this weekend, spending two days with a group of quilters in a Quilta Figurer class. I find it somewhat difficult explaining this class to people who haven’t seen the samples, but it’s a free motion quilting class with a little twist, using different methods and supplies while going through a series of quilting patterns. It’s a really fun class to teach and the students seem to enjoy it just as much no matter how little or much experience they do have with free motion quilting.

Anyway, husband helped me set up the classroom which had brand new brilliant lighting. We set all the tables in a circle and that worked very well with everyone being able to see each other and still have room to spread out their stuff. The other great thing is that we could keep all the cords and doohdahs contained in the centre, making the classroom a much safer place to walk. Here are some pictures from the weekend.

Students at work

My samples

The mandatory show & tell shot

Student work

Now I’m looking forward to see finished projects at the guild meeting next week, there were lots of sample pieces being transformed into gorgeous projects at the end of the class. I am most certainly itching to do a little quilting myself too. Spending so much time with a great group of quilters and their fabrics and threads and soaking in the creative energy does that to you, but first I have a pattern to finish and then it’s grandma weekend and then there are a dozen kits or so to be made and then daughter is having surgery and the young ones will be staying here for a few days but then, then I get to play. Can’t wait.

Company of quilters

We’ve made it through half of daughter’s estimated recovery period and I kicked off the second half in company with a small group of lovely quilters. Working our way through the Quilta Figurer class, we spent two days together this weekend. The students were eager to learn which is key in such a labor intensive class, going through different techniques and patterns.

I did my first class ever in English as one of the students was Canadian, and it worked rather well I’d say, there were no stitching through fingers or other hiccups due to communication problems.

They made lots of great samples and all started their quilted shapes projects during class.

I am looking forward to see the finished projects; they all turn out so differently. At the end of the second day my fingers were itching to get stitching, so I’m looking forward to life getting back to normal. Right now my batteries are pretty much empty at the end of the day, but it’s ok, life is quite good after all. Today grandbaby was 7 months and got his first tooth and grandson did his first preschool homework. Important milestones indeed.

After weeks of taking care of young people I really did enjoy a couple of days in the company of grownups outside my family, and even better – quilters.

Thank you for a fun weekend and for being such great students ladies!

Quilta Figurer class

Even though life’s moving on in a wooosh-wooosh-huh-Friday-again?-pace around here, there are still some things are slow – like uploading pictures from various cameras and phones.

Here are some snapshots from the Quilta Figurer class I taught almost 3 weeks ago. It was a fun class, heavy on the workload, but with happy students and teacher. We had quilters spanning from newbie to experienced free motion-ers, all eager to learn new FMQ techniques and patterns.

They were all happily working on their test sandwiches. Test cloths are supposed to be a place to try out new things without any pressure, not another tedious task, which has inspired me to start on quite a few test cloths myself lately. The key is trying again, you will always get better.

Our classroom (where we also have our monthly guild meetings) is light and airy and perfect this time of the year. You’re walking at your own risk though with all the extension cords going this way and that.

As usual, I get too caught up in the teaching process to remember taking proper pictures. You can see a few more on the guild blog.

It’s grandma weekend at my house so I won’t be doing much sewing, but I’m sure it won’t be boring. We haven’t been painting since I cleared my art supplies from the dining room table in time for my birthday weekend, so maybe it’s time to clutter it up again…

Have a wonderful weekend!

Quilta Figurer

Quilta Figurer (Quilted Shapes) is my new free motion class. We will work our way through 9 different free motion patterns, 3 different techniques and play with them creating shapes.


We will draw, work on practice cloths and make panels which can be used for place mats, wall hangings, table runners, pillows etc.


“Quilta Figurer: Blomster” flowers

“Quilta Figurer: Sommerfugler” butterflies

“Quilta Figurer: Hjerter” hearts

”Quilta Figurer: Trær” trees

Words (god jul is Norwegian for Merry Christmas, vår is Norwegian for spring, and uhu is owl language)
“Quilta Figurer: Jul”

“Quilta Figurer: God jul”

“Quilta Figurer: Vår”

“Quilta Figurer: Vår vår”

“Quilta Figurer: Uhu”

My practice cloths are long and narrow so I can make them into table runners.

As you can probably tell, I had a lot of fun making these. My free motion mojo is definitely back!