From block to top

Wooosh. That’s the sound of August and September flying by. While I spent very little time in the studio, I was exercising every day, picking up the pace were I left off way too many months ago. We have been enjoying the most amazing weather this fall, so spending time outdoors has been a pleasure indeed.

I have returned to my studio though, happily working on this and that and stitching up improv blocks. I was planning to write a post about our brilliant day of Improv Round Robin back in September, but as I am having a bit of trouble uploading pictures today, they will have to wait to another day.

I have made progress on a few of the projects from this post, among others the block from the Design a block challenge.

The block was stashed away with a few bits and pieces which would go with it, but I had to play with a few other options first like this batik which I adore. It was way too busy, but you never know until you’ve tried.

Then this fabric caught my eye. It is a beautiful heavyweight woven cotton fabric which I picked up in Birmingham last year, 

and with the purple embellishments, it was the perfect companion to the purple string from the bag.

A little slash and stitch later, and the top for a new pillow was finished. It has later been quilted, but those pictures need to be uploaded too. Oh well.

Thanks for stopping by!

Bad quilting day

Those days don’t come around often, fortunately, but today I couldn’t seem to make my head and hands work together at all. Just look at this mess!

With this design in mind, I cut a star from contact paper and quilted roughly around it several times along the middle sky section of the table runner. It didn’t look too bad, so I moved on to the echoing lines when I really should have left it alone. 

Big stitches, little stitches, stitches jumping all over the place. Awful. Oh well, now I have some hand work to do before I try again. The stars could stay I guess, but I think it will be easier with a clean slate.

While free motion quilting was clearly not in the stars, I went looking for something easy to work on, and searched through all my little treasures. In a box, buried under some old Christmas fabrics, I found a bunch of old Christmas blocks. 

I remember using some of them for two table toppers years and years ago. 

One of the fabrics was particularly horrible, just look at this rather stiff green one. The roughly appliquéd bright red heart did not add anything to it either, at least nothing good.

Now I have unstitched 8 of the blocks, discarding the appliquéd squares and replacing them with something better. Half of the blocks have been stitched back together, and the rest is laid out for tomorrow.

I don’t know when, if ever, these blocks will be finished, but tomorrow will be a great quilting day!

"The Bubble Quilt"

The Bubble Quilt is a Purple book project (see this post). 

I pieced it at the string quilting workshop back here. 

It was supposed to become a modern pillow case, but instead I quilted the daylight out of it playing with bubbly free motion quilting designs.

Oh how much fun that was, so much better than endless straight line stitching.

It’s the perfect size for a table topper and the colours are just right for my living room.

(Sorry about the poor light)

One less page in the Purple book.

Thanks for stopping by!

Taking inventory

Every now and then I feel the need to take inventory of where I am and make a plan for where I’ll be going next. For quite a while now, I have been starting lots of new projects, trying different things. Last year, for instance, when I was feeling not so well, I pieced tops. Sometimes piecing seems less challenging than actually finishing quilts, doesn’t it? All that wrestling of huge chunks of fabric and batting and all can be physically exhausting – or maybe that’s just me.

And all those scraps I have been piecing together just to get my mojo back or to get rid of some of those ever growing piles of scraps? They can be made into anything. Anything!

My design wall back in January; these are now stashed away in a shoe box but will soon be made into something colourful and fun.

Anyway, finished tops and works in progress have been piling up all over my studio, and I feel ready to get back to them. Quite a few have been finished already and sent off to my magazine editor, which feels great, but there are still many more just waiting for their turn in the limelight.

(My design wall got full back in January, so I taped a piece of fleece to the wall. Three months later and it's still hanging there..)

I always like to think of my ongoing projects in a positive light; they are treasures on which I can enjoy working when I feel like it. I have kept a Treasure box for years, which I posted about here, and have made lots of projects from its content over the years. Well, my current treasures won’t fit into a box, so I keep them on a desk in my studio. To get an easy overview, I decided to keep a record. I found an unused diary from 2011 and have been writing down all my projects, one page for each project. 

I write down ideas, plans, progress etc on each project, and when a project is ready to leave the studio (I stitch my bindings at home), I rip the page out and throw it away. That ripping sound is rather cathartic.

I’m not making promises which I not intend to keep, so I’ll not say that I won’t start any new projects until I have finished all of them, but working with my purple book has put forgotten treasures back in my mind. This is not a small task as things slip out of there way too soon as I move on to the next idea and the next and the next. Now I want to work on them, I get new ideas, and I have things ready to bring to guild meetings. No more throwing together a new project half an hour before the meeting starts; I’ll just take a look in my purple book to see what I would like to do today. Something small? Playing with blocks? Free motion quilting? Binding? Piecing? Well, I have got them all. Quilting large quilts is, by the way, the perfect task when I have company in my studio; chatting with someone makes time and miles of stitching fly.

How long I will keep my record – well that depends on how long it works for me. All I know is that for now, I’m gaining momentum.

How do you keep up with your projects? Do you work on only one project at the time, do you keep several at different stages, or are they ganging up on you and taking over your studio too?

"Colour me pink"

I have blogged about my early days in the studio earlier, happily rediscovering old treasures in the Treasure Box. The 9 blocks from this post were made into a table topper for MIL for her birthday, finished up the day before we started packing up the house back in May.

(Pre quilting)

The flowers were orange so I wanted to add some hot pink to them to tie them to the border fabric. I have, for some reason, been working a lot with pinks lately, and am falling in love with them big time.

(Background squares all from thrifted fabric.)

I had some heavy weight, shiny rayon embroidery thread from last year’s shopping extravaganza, and while it was way too thick to go in the needle, it worked well enough in the bobbin. Hitting the middle of the flower from the back did not work quite so well, so the swirly swirls ended up wherever they wanted. As long as they were on the flower, I did not mind, who said they needed to be in the centre anyway.

(Flowery fabric from the Mrs Bouquet quilt)

I did not have a lot of time to fiddle around with the thread tension either, so I decided to like the hot pink eyelashes keeping the decorative thread in place. You can like almost any quilting mishap if you just put your mind to it, right?

It has a scrappy binding which was hand stitched to the back 2 minutes before we were due at the in-laws' house for the annual Norway Day dinner. The Big Box of binding is a great time saver indeed.

The quilt is very bright and cheery and MIL is rather fond of it although I’m not sure orange was quite her thing before I started quilting.

The overall appearance became a little pinker though.)

Have a wonderful weekend:)

The 28 strips quilt, a free pattern

This is a fun and easy pattern whether you already have a stash of strips, a jelly roll, or choose to cut new strips from any collection of fabrics. Mine is made from strips from my Treasure Box and measures 36”*36”. You can easily adjust the size to your needs.

(It is a beautiful sunny day today with a little wind which made my quilt dance. The light was a bit difficult; too bright in the sun, and a bit too dark in the shadow, but there you go. We'd better enjoy outdoor photo shoots while we still can.)

I first wrote about my Treasure Box back here, and did an update on what some of the treasures had been made into here. The box keeps being fed new treasures, and some are being used. If you are wondering what these treasures are, they are little pieces and shapes and blocks and stuff which are ready to be used in a project. Instead of being considered unfinished, they are a resource, instant starter pieces. It’s just a way of looking at leftovers and ideas which didn’t quite make it into a finished project.

The first few weeks in the new studio, when everything still was a little up in the air, the Treasure Box, or boxes really, were a great starting point. One treasure after the other was brought out, the ideas kept rolling and fabrics were added to the pieces. It was awesome. Some of the finished projects have been delivered to my magazine editor, and others have been given away, but the boxes are still full.

This particular treasure was a set of 28 pastel strips,

so I challenged myself to use them all, only adding a border fabric if I should want to. Looking around the studio, the perfect match was sitting on top of one of the bags - a light and lovely thrifted curtain. While the finished quilt does not really have a border, it appears to have one.

It also has a big couched flower which adds extra texture and movement and ties the pieced blocks and “border” together.

Couching is a great design tool for scrappy quilts; depending on the colour and thickness of the yarn, it can blend in or pop.

The pattern would look just as lovely in any other colour scheme or theme - Christmas fabrics, baby fabrics, delicate pinks, greys, modern geometrics, or luscious flowers; leave the couched shape out, or make a different one to fit your theme.

You can download the free pattern here. Enjoy!

Happy spring

I have been enjoying spring lately although mainly from afar. It’s dandelion season and as dandelions are not my friends at all, I’m keeping indoors.

I am still working on moving stuff to the studio, but at a much slower pace. I had some friends over on Thursday evening for an impromptu get-together, and it was very nice indeed. I am planning to teach small classes in my studio, so their feedback about lighting and setup of worktables etc is important. I am very much looking forward to spending lots of time there with my fellow quilters as well as on my own.

Planning the new house is taking up a lot of brain activity, and this is only the beginning of a long process. We haven’t got a date for the demolition of our house yet, but it’s right around the corner, and it looks like we’ll be living in the house next door while our house is being rebuilt. I have to admit to feeling rather ambivalent to the whole thing, but I’m sure it will be great when it’s finished.

I am spending more time in my studio, playing with the content of my Treasure Box. It is very exciting, and I’m restarting new projects left and right, enjoying looking at the little bits and pieces with brand new eyes, like for instance these appliquéd flower blocks.

 

 

I cut out hundreds of different sized flowers for this quilt back in 2005-06 (Blooming dreams (2006), 90*120cm)

and some of the leftover flowers were appliquéd onto squares for this table topper which was a present for a friend of mine for her 85th birthday back in 2008 (Rogalandsblomster (2008)) – and with 9 blocks to spare  The rest of the flowers were from a block lottery at my guild.

The rest of the flowers were used on this quilt.

Having tied off the thread tails and stitched the blocks together, I auditioned a few border fabrics

and chose this one.

It has bright pink spots, not orange like the flowers, but I think that just adds more interest. The top is now finished and put aside in the to-be-quilted pile. Yes indeed, I am making a pile of finished tops for those days when my mojo is winding down again and I just want to quilt.

Do you do that too, save work for less creative days to come?

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!