Multiple generations

While I have posted before about my generations of stashes, it is quite different to see them in all their glory, spread out through the house. Oh man, all that thrifted goodness that I simply could not pass by at the time, and I'm only like a third into the excavation process.

 

My brain has been buzzing with class ideas for my new studio and I'm writing them all down as they pass by. I just might have to add a few more non-quilting-fabric-projects to the list.

 

I have been feeling totally overwhelmed by the whole thing, but today I decided on a plan which will make the move a bit easier. I have found a couple of movers that will show up two days and move whatever I have managed to box/bag up. The first load will probably go on Thursday, leaving me with space to move around, particulary in my otherwise crammed and oh-so-lonely sewing room.

There won't be a lot happening here sewing wise in another week or two, but I'll meet with my quilting friends tomorrow and a few hours of happy humming and chatting sounds like heaven right now.

A non paid position as studio organizer is open in case you are one of those super effective Sheldon-like neat freaks. I tried to sell the idea to my younger sister who inherited that gene from our mother, but she didn't take the bait. Bummer; we would have had so much fun.

Thanks for stopping by!

The lucky day

Our guild, Rogaland Quiltelag, meets once a month. A part of our meetings, as of so many other guilds, is the raffle that finishes our evening together. The guild will purchase prizes from whatever shop that is present at the meeting, add some from the prize stash, and guild members who have previously won will also bring prizes. I always buy 5 tickets with 10 numbers on each; sometimes I win, but most times I don’t.

Without knowing the number of tickets sold that evening, I cannot tell you what the odds are that I would win anything at all, but I can tell you that those odds worked in my favour leaving my hand raised embarrassingly often.

Not a bad way to feed my stash I’d say.

I also won an issue of the magazine, Quiltemagasinet, and when opening it, I realized that it was the very issue in which the first article about me and my work was. Talk about meant to be.

I have recently re-joined the board of the guild, so I’m planning to do some posts about guild business - both to share my ideas and hear yours – and since we are on the topic of raffles, how do the raffles in your guilds and groups work?

White on white

Have you ever thought about

how playing around with your camera and different light

can teach you a thing or two about quilting?

One of my goals this year is to use more white in my work. I tend to shy away from white unless it is a neutral or bold design element. It’s the same way in our home; I’ll always pick the lightest of grey instead of white, so I want to start playing more with whites. I have, by the way, set quite a few small goals for myself, which I will get back to as I work at them. So far I have started at
- becoming a confident zipperista
- using more yellow
- embracing white.

So, you can’t make an omelet without breaking any eggs, or use white (or yellow for that matter) without a white fabric stash and I had to purchase some new fabric. It’s not like white on whites makes your heart sing by looking at them on a screen, but fabric shopping is fabric shopping and still quite fun I’d say.

 

The package arrived the other evening and my camera was out anyway, so I took a few pictures in (halogen) lamp light.

Then I repeated the process the next day in daylight.

Can you see the positive/negative effect when they are next to each other?

It’s quite striking, isn’t it.

So, hanging on a wall, the white on white fabrics will look very different depending on the light

– meaning that if you put your colours together in lamp light, they may look totally different the very next day.

I always knew this truth about colours, but not even white is only white, is it.

Sunday

It wouldn't be the New Year unless I got struck by a bug, and 2014 is not an exception. Christmas was cleared away yesterday which feels great. I love putting it all up, and I love taking it all down, and now my bug and I can rest peacefully on the couch. I'm not allowed visiting the hospital, but my father in law is doing so much better so I'm sure they don't miss me. Thank you for your well wishes and prayers!

I received a big bag of cheering up in the mail yesterday; can you tell which colours I have been craving? I am still doing very well with my resolution on no-fabric-hoarding though, but I'm only human and orange is so gorgeous when it's winter and raining.

Which colour is your pick-me-up-for-sure?

Hopefully I'll be back with my Christmas projects soon, it feels a little late already. Thanks for stopping by!

Borneo fabric

I was tidying up my workspace the other day and discovered my Christmas present fabrics on the bottom of a pile. All this time I thought the fabric was in the laundry room (now you understand why I had to tidy).
These fabrics are bought on Borneo (Malaysia) where my sister spent a couple of weeks before Christmas. She had one day off work there and went to a local market to buy fabric for me. Apparently lots of people got involved discussing patterns and colours. The fabrics are meant for sarong-type clothing, and are of a wonderful quality.
Aren’t they just gorgeous!

I will, December 3rd

have fun using these thrifty goodies; a curtain so ugly that I couldn’t resist and a table cloth with a pretty ribbon. I’m thinking simple nostalgic pillows for my couch.

I will, December 2nd

start using my stash of glorious batiks.

Vestlandstreff, Day 3 1/2

AKA drooling over my newly acquired goodies from the weekend:

Little pieces of fabric (we don’t do fat quarters here so pre-cuts are usually 30-40 cm)
a couple of new backgrounds for the Christmas on Earth samples

and The Perfect Fabric, black (did not photograph very well) with dots of oranges; it was calling my name so loudly that there was no escaping even if I had wanted to.

Whiff of the 80ies

I had to dig into my collection of 80ies fabrics for some of the yarn kits. Loving the look of small scale flower patterns as a backdrop for the yarn flowers, I have been searching high and low for them. With no such luck (and don’t you tell me you know some place who sells them for a dollar a yard including shipping and handling; it’s too late now), I slashed into my precious, now ironed, fabric.
Do you think these will ever get back in style; I kind of hope so, they look great with bold, modern, colourful fabric. And yarn.

Eysores

Can you tell what this is?
Can you tell which era these fabrics are from?
Can you tell which one is the uglier?
Can you tell what I’ll be doing with them?

The answers are:
A stack of eyesores from the eighties, and my money is not on this one

or even this one
but this one.

These were not my colours in the eighties and time has not exactly improved my lack of love for them. I “inherited” them from a friend whose sister did a lot of crafting back in the eighties. Some of the fabrics are actually quite lovely and will be used for quilting, but these three…

As to the last question; I have been toying with an “Eyesores from the eighties” challenge, wondering how I can alter them so they at least can be used for backings. What do you think: rags or wonderful art in the making? Would you like a piece for a really challenging challenge? I’ll be mailing pieces off with a big smile on my face.-)

Added: These are all cheater cloth fabrics, sorry I forgot to write that.

Make do update

More that 3 weeks into my first Make do month, I’m doing great. The only thing I had to buy was a piece of tulle for my City quilt, other that that I have been making do with the best of them. Honestly I haven’t even been that tempted, but I am getting my fabric fixes by sorting and playing with my stash – and some unexpected gifts from MIL. This was her dress when husband was little (about 45++ years ago) and later made into a pillow case. Now the seams are ripped and the pieces reside in my stash. I love the colours and pattern and am amazed how modern it looks.

Shouldn't have

I shouldn’t have done that.

9 yards of this fabulous linen
with trees
and a cow
and a bridge and cars

Of all the things I should be doing yesterday, like tons of laundry, working on a piece with a deadline, and preparing hand work for Easter family time, shopping was not even on the list. Yet I’m sitting here with yards of new and thrifty fabric and yarn and big rolls and small rolls of fibre that’s neither fabric nor paper. It reminds me a little of Lutradur, so I’m guessing polyester something. Some rolls are definitely felt which I hope can take the heat from the iron; the sales lady had no idea.
I do need a bit of change, and think my new purchases will be fun to play with. Some of them are already destined for specific projects, so that makes me feel a little better about the unplanned and unnecessary shopping spree.

Most of the fabric went into the washing machine before I got the camera out, but look at these – how could I resist this red table cloth
or these adorable dogs on a French designer duvet cover?
I’m back on the list this morning though. Boooring…

Got Stash

I took inventory of my 60ies and 70ies table cloths yesterday, and here is what came out from the cupboard:

Cotton cloth

Linen cloth
They are so inspiring to work with. I bought them before I started quilting even though I rarely use anything on my tables. I just loved them – the texture, patterns, colours, everything. I don’t love them any less now, and my brain is buzzing with ideas I want to try out. Some of them will hopefully come to life tomorrow when I’m participating in Friday Night Sew-in over at Heidi’s.

All the playing and experimenting is not just for fun though – I have a piece that I need to do and hope to use some ideas from the experiments.

If you’d like to join in on the Table Cloth Challenge you can read the other posts about it here. You do not have to have a blog to join in; email me your pictures, and I’ll add them to the post.

The post where we'll link up our before-pictures (hopefully a Mister Linky) will be up on Saturday 20th. The plan is to keep it open for new links until the end of April.

Happy clothhunting!

Got Silk

My mother-in-law brought a piece of silk home from China a while back, which she intended for a skirt. At home she discovered that the fabric was pieced and therefore unsuitable for clothing; instead I got to add a new piece of fabric to my stash. MIL will be 70 soon and I though it would be nice to make her a little purse from the silk; I know she would love one.

Now it all sounds good, but there is just a little problem. The silk is sooo slippery. I have bought an iron-on stabilizer (Vlieselin) and will try a little snippet to see if it works. The other option I can think of is to fuse silk and batting together using fusible web.

Anybody who has made bags from slippery silk (successfully)? Any helpful ideas would be highly appreciated, thank you!