"Daisy Chain"

“Daisy Chain”, which I shared process pictures of back here, has been finished for a while. I have been waiting for pictures of the quilt in its new home, but I keep forgetting it even though the new home is just downstairs.

Our daughter and I are both very happy with how the quilt turned out and it fits just as well on the young ones’ wall as it did on my floor while taking pictures.

I worked quite a bit on the quilting design before I started quilting, using the YouDoodle app as described in this post. I worked both on a single block 

and how to chain the blocks together. It’s such a great app.

This was my first time free motion quilting such a big all-over design – which was quite hard work as I had to make big movements. I did not mark the top, so no flowers are the same even though the number of petals is constant.

I wanted the quilting lines to be as fat as possible, and found an old black spool which would do the trick. It was rather hairy and kept breaking, but I did not give up even though there was times when I wanted nothing more. I was prepared to clean lint out of the bobbin area every hour or so, but there was surprisingly very little lint. Still, all that extra work with the thread breaking made me throw the spool out as soon as I finished quilting so I wouldn't be tempted to use it again.

The design shows well against all the fabrics,

and also quite well on the back (bobbin thread from the huge cone in this post). I found this bright and fun fabric in a bag in my studio and thought it would be perfect for such a bright and happy quilt.

I used a glue pen to temporarily attach the sleeve to the back while hand stitching it. The glue pens have spared me from unpicking thousands of basting stitches since I discovered them. You’ve got to love that.

A little warning though - it dries white, not clear. How I know? Take a guess.

The edges were a bit wobbly as I didn’t quilt all the way to the very edge, but they have already straightened out a bit while hanging.

The quilt measures 64”*48” and has my favourite low loft polyester batting which made all the moving around more bearable.

Thanks for stopping by!

"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.

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Unplugged: Colour study

I have been away for a few days visiting my family in Lillehammer. My parents have moved into their new home, and I was very happy to bring them their housewarming gift which has kept me rather busy lately. I’ll post pictures as soon as I upload them.

My little colour study from Easter break is finished though.

It is hand quilted and has a scrappy binding.

I like the rough texture of the thrifted shirt background peeking through the scraps.

I left a 3M hook on the wall after taking down the Christmas decorations, and have been displaying small quilts as I work on them.

I quite like this one, it’s very sunny and bright, and all done by hand except for attaching the binding on the front.

Note to self: Study how to hand quilt properly. I’m sure there are better ways than my sore-fingered-and-quite-slow one.

How do you even put a regular binding on a quilt all by hand??

"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.

Happy 8th!

(Original post with pattern posted back here )

Third generation doll quilts

Grandson and I dropped off the latest batch of doll quilts on Friday. He started on a “big” department in kindergarten last fall and I had yet to make something for them. While he may not be playing much with dolls, there are plenty of others who do. This is our third batch of doll quilts; you can see the previous batches here and here.

Doll quilts are so much fun to make. These were all quilted when I was trying out Sir John and his features. They are made from leftover blocks from a recent scrap quilt and some really old Ohio star blocks. Two of the blocks had rather dull setting triangles, so they came off and pink borders were added instead. 

You can see how I transformed some of these blocks from a table cloth to place mats here.

Some of the quilts have fleece backings, others soft polyester batting. 

Some of them are free motion quilted, others with the walking foot. 

I had lots of fun stitching serpentine lines, a stitching feature I had wanted for a while.

Spirals take forever even on small quilts!

The bindings are stitched with different decorative stitches with varying success.

My favourite is this one.

The plan was to take an outdoor photo but the light and weather did not cooperate at all. Oh well.

Thanks for stopping by!