"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!

Corner block play

Warning: this post is picture heavy!
I have spent some happy hours playing with the Double trouble blocks, now renamed Corner blocks. I stitched the pieces together in no time, partly because they are super easy, and partly from being rejuvenated from playing hide and seek with the grandboys in the studio. There are quite a few empty spaces at my floor and I’m pretty much the only one there at the weekends.

My daughter has wished for something colourful to hang on her living room wall, and I am only too happy to make something for her. Let me put it this way – we don’t usually share the love of colour:) I have been documenting the process with pictures of each and every move hence the heavy picture load.

The blocks are 8”*8”.

The overall feel of the Corner blocks were on the orange side, so I made a few new blocks – two shades of pink and one very bright cold. This was was my starting point with all the blocks going in the same direction.

Twisting some of them this way

turning some the other way.

Arranging from light on the top to dark on the bottom. I quite like this layout and may use it with some of the other blocks.

Rotating some of the blocks. Loved this, but now how the lines seem to go off the top and bottom edges.

Adding two more columns making the width 64” which is appropriate for the space in which it will hang. Creating horizontal lines, and adding more light, medium and dark fabrics. The striped turquoise fabric is from one of her childhood dresses. I only have a scrap left now.

Going back to vertical lines and twisting every other block on the top and bottom so that the lines don’t go off the edge.

Adding another cold block.

Adding another row while keeping the top and three bottom rows as is. The light fabrics in some of the new blocks are too light, they pop too much.

Auditioning replacements

The revamped blocks back in place. Adding those extra squares of the two bright striped fabrics created a much better balance.

Replacing a block which had a bright orange fabric and swapping two others.

Swapping

Swapping

Adding more light by replacing a block with a lighter block.

Swapping

Swapping

This is where I left it. So many possibilities in one simple block!

Looking at it, I want to swap block 3 and 4 in the top row. The quilt-in-progress is already daughter approved as I’d rather know whether she likes it before I put a lot of work into quilting it!

I can’t wait to stitch the blocks together, the appearance changes so much; everything looks so much sharper. Falling in love with old abandoned projects is awesome!

I'll be posting a quick tutorial for these blocks later this week in case you too would like to play with some corner blocks.
Thanks for stopping by:)

The story of "Pupe"

I have a question for you: how do you determine which old UFOs are worth the time and effort it will take you finishing them up and which to let go?
 
How far it is along? The time you have invested? The money you spent on those insanely expensive hand printed fabrics when you should have bought your kids new shoes? Need to fall back in love with it? A deadline like a UFO challenge? In dire need of a quick gift for someone’s birthday tomorrow which you had totally forgotten and it’s in the middle of the night and the UFO is sitting right there in front of you and just need the binding hand stitched to the back? Don’t understand the question; what on earth does green little men from outer space have to do with quilting?

For me it’s more about the feel of the project than what I have already put into it. As an example, let me tell you the story of "Pupe".

Pupe began its journey back when I was a new quilter, working mainly with thrifted fabrics and scraps from my early days of sewing clothes and costumes for my daughter. After a while I had gotten tired of cutting everything into 6 ½” squares to be used of all kinds of blocks, so I moved onto simple 4 ½” squares. Some were appliquéd, but most were just plain squares. I had big plans for them, making quilts to give away. This was way back when we still had dial up modems and Internet was used for bare necessities like emails and ordering quilting books from the US.

 
So I pieced a few tops, like this one, lovingly made from thrifted duvet covers and a quite a few squares from my first US fabric purchase ever – a scrap box of 100 fat quarters from Keepsake Quilting. Totally awesome! My batting of choice at the time was the fluffy polyester kind which came on a roll and had to be manhandled through the sewing machine with both arms and a crowbar, so I would tie these with cotton crochet yarn. After tying this first top, my initial donation idea fell through, so everything was set aside on the top shelf in my sewing room closet.

I found them there a few years later while rearranging my fabric stash, and put everything, including years of accumulated dust for sure, into a huge plastic bag to be stored in the downstairs spare room with all my finished quits. When we later rearranged the house before grandson was born, the bag was stashed  away under the stairs for storage. I found it there this summer while we were looking for something, and brought them upstairs to see what I could do with them. The red quilt was lying on the floor when grandbaby came over, and he hugged it and said pupe (pute means pillow in Norwegian, and at 1 ½ all pillows and quilts and blankets and cuddly things are pupe to him). He was dragging it around, hugging it, sitting on it, and playing with it, with no worries about the raw edges and the noticeable shade of dust caught in the batting.

So what else could I do. I stitched vertical lines in the ditch, having fluffy polyester batting flashbacks, bound it with scraps of bias tape and it was done. On Monday grandbaby got sick with chickenpox and wasn’t feeling well at all, so I threw Pupe in the washer, and handed it over on Tuesday, fresh from the dryer and dust free.

Will Pupe ever win a prize in a show? No. Will it make the cover of a magazine? Not very likely. Will it provide cuddles and softness and warmth for my grandboys? Very much so. Does it feel good to finish a really old UFO? Yes ideed. Was it worth it? Well, what do you think?

Pillow talk, The Terrible Twos

The second Funky Fowl pillow from this post and third UFO for Finns’s challenge, “Clara & Fredrikke, The Terrible Twos”,
familiar ladies in unfamiliar colour combinations.

Looking at these Funky Fowl pillows, I’m thinking they would have worked well as little quilts too, just adding a binding instead of back side. Hm.

Yesterday was such a peaceful day and I spent it doing not what I was supposed to (like sewing). Instead I did silent things like sorting through parts of yarn stash, organizing my stash of knitting needles, and pairing odd socks. With the sound of no road work outside and white snow covering everything it was just the perfect day pottering about.

Now it’s Monday morning and the road work is back on; I hope they’ll take a break around the holidays…

Pillow talk, Darling Dorrit

I have finished a few pillows during the last few weeks between knitting hats. This one is a Christmas present and is hopefully on her merry way across the country as I write this.
“Darling Dorrit” is one of the Funky Fowl from this post. It has been lovely visiting with an old friend and finish one more of the pledged ufos for Finn's challenge. She looks kind of comfy on my couch, doesn’t she?
I’ll be back tonight for the drawing of Giveaway Day. It’s also Friday Night Sew In and I have plans. It’s always good to have a plan.

I will, December 10th

make the sky for my Village No 2. I’ve got a blue table cloth (still love table cloths you know) with snowflakes that would look great on my parents’ table.

The excess snow is off, see

I’ve got houses for a whole city, so maybe next year there will be a Village No 3.

Ulla from Finland has also built a village, have a look at hers here.

I will, December 8th

shovel snow off my little free pieced roofs.I’ll be building a new village from houses started a year ago. This is the 4th and last UFO pledged for Finn’s challenge and I’m enjoying revisiting the old neighborhood.

I finished sewing the roofs on last Wednesday at my friendly little sewing group. It was our 2nd anniversary and here are the ladies minus 2 that wasn’t there and me, the photographer. It’s such a great group!
Carol has added her project to the Napkin Challenge, so be sure to check it out.

I’ll be giving you an update on the Make a Boob project soon. I’ve got Boob Mail, Boob Stash and a couple of sponsors; great week in Boob-land! If you haven’t read about the project you can visit the Make a Boob blog.

Have a wonderful Wednesday!

Napkin Challenge update

My out-of-comfort-zone Napkin Challenge place mats are only missing the binding and some little details. As interesting as it has been working with alien (you know, not from my world) fabrics, I’ll try again with something more colourful.

So, not wanting to make more nisses (gnome is called nisse here), I’m taking inspiration from this napkin for a new project. I’ll be using those cute little buttons from this post as berries.

Oh yes, much better! You’ll find a little tutorial for making these free form leaves here.

Real challenge

I decided to take the Napkin Challenge to the next level and use colours I don’t usually (read never ever) work with. Going through my Treasure Box I found a stack of blocks made a couple of Christmases ago and then tucked away. I won a few charm packs in earthy Christmas tones at a raffle and thought they would make ok Christmas table runners. I cut them into 4 ½”*2 ½ rectangles and paired them up with strips of the only fabric I had that would kind of sort of work.

Obviously I did not love the result enough to finish the projects and now they are little treasures kick-starting my challenge projects. To complete the crooked picture I also dug out 2 fat quarters which match the colour scheme perfectly.

This is going to be fun and far, far, far away from my usual bright colours.-)

I have also signed up for Finn's New Year Eve's Challenge again, and this will be one of the 4 projects I hope to finish in 2010. Two birds and one stone...