Helmethead

I have been totally preoccupied with life-outside-blogland lately, including reading other blogs. The process of getting things in order is rather stressful, leaving my head so tight that it feels like I’m wearing a helmet. I cannot say that it’s very pleasant, so I’m glad it doesn’t happen very often.

On the positive side it looks like I may have found my new out-of-home studio space, and will hopefully sign the contract on Monday. It was not as easy as I expected, with all the vacant offices around here, as sewing machines make quite noisy neighbours and are not welcome everywhere (read most places). I’m crossing my fingers that I can move in on April 1st and move on to the next step.

The studio is an “inside space” with no windows except for a few narrow skylights; my very own quiltcave. It’s quite funny as my mother made a comment this Christmas about how I find my inspiration within and could work in a cave, and now I will – sort of. While my daughter found the windowless space a bit claustrophobic, I found it rather comforting, and imagine what you can do with all that wall space.

Tomorrow I’ll be heading southwards to Kristiansand for the annual meeting of the Norwegian Quilt Association, filling my car with stuff. The good thing about driving yourself is going directly from home to the hotel, the drawback is that you bring everything and then some, and I most certainly am. Better safe than sorry, right.

The finished Branch samples are packed (WIPs posted here), but I’m bringing only pillow covers, not the forms. A part of the class is demonstrating different ways of finishing the panels, and it’s so much easier to show and not only just talk about it. This is the Fall Branch pillow with the wool boucle from this post

I have a hard time deciding whether it’s cool or weird, but there it is

and look, it has a zipper closure on the bottom.

One of the Spring samples is also made into a pillow, using the background fabric as a border

and it has an (almost) invisible zipper closure on the back.

The Winter Branch is finished

with a regular binding made from the background taffeta fabric.

I love the striped backing with all the quilting lines running in the other direction.

The last Spring sample has a invisible binding in progress attached so that I can show the different steps. It would look better finished, but then I would have to make and bring yet another sample.

I’d better get on with packing clothes and such; as pretty and warm the quilts may be, I cannot wear them for dinner, can I.

See you later and thanks for stopping by!

Thread tales

What was supposed to be a few all-alone-just-sewing days has turned into helping-take-care-of-sick-grandboys days.

I did however spend quite a few happy hours with my machine on Saturday, working on the Whatever quilt. It has been quilted, oh boy, how that thing has been quilted.

I collected all my variegated Sulky Gutermann threads, matched them up with close enough bobbin threads and hit the pedal. The look of all those spools together almost make me weep, they are so pretty. What can I say, I have a thing for threads.

Looking at all those spools together, I realized something about my precious threads which even the salesperson at the store did not know. When I bought the 4 different oranges for the Spring in my step quilt, 3 of them had the same number but looked different, so I asked her and she said they must be from different dyes. See?

Well, the colour number is on the top of the spool, not the side.

See, different numbers.. Duh. And yes, I have used all but a couple of threads on the quilt.

Tomorrow is the Festival of Strings at Stitched in Colour (sorry, cannot link from the Blogger app), so do stop by if you want to see my finished solid/vintage string top.

Got to go, it's Tom & Jerry time.

Thanks for stopping by!

Scraps to you too

I have got two stacks of strings sitting right here in front of me. I signed up for Stitched in Colour's Scrap Attack (String Fever) back in early April, totally clueless regarding how spring would be like time wise. It's only a string quilt, no big deal, right??

Well, a month and a half later and with only a week to go, it's about time to get started. Solid strings from the Spring in my step quilt and recycled strings from the Whatever quilt. Hopefully a match made in heaven, possibly not.

You'll never know if you don't try, right, and it's only the top that needs to be finished.

Thanks for stopping by!

Spring in my step - The quilt

Having handed my mother’s birthday quilt over to her on Sunday, I can finally show pictures of the quilt and not only bits and pieces. Here it is.

My mother had wished for a quilt to hang over their bed, so it measures approx 70*150cm (28”*60”).

40 different fabrics – 30 solids and 10 patterned, and miles of variegated orange threads.

I was a really windy day, so I was running back and forth trying to secure all the corners to the fence and keeping the edges straight.

The quilt would only hang flat when the wind was pinning it against the fence, but it’s was quite cool watching it twist and turn.

Now the next question is if my parents will be happy with it, but if not, I won’t mind getting it back..

Half way to nowhere

Sometimes I wonder

whether some of my stumbling attempts at mixed media art

would be frame worthy.

It’s particularly this piece

that has me wondering

as I love every little bright bit

or maybe I should make a collage from these pictures; that could be frame worthy.

As for me, I’ll soon be on my way back home from celebrating mother’s birthday and handing over the Spring in my step quilt. See you when I get there!

Wrong footed

Before starting stitching the binding on the Spring in my step quilt yesterday, I did a little test of the ¼” foot to see if it really was ¼”. I hadn’t been piecing on this machine for a long time, and my pieced blocks turned out on the skimpy side the other day, so I suspected there was some funny business going on.

Right indeed, can you see the tip of the needle? Not exactly on the ¼” line is it!

Instead of taking the trouble of locating the instruction book, I spent quite a lot of time fiddling with the machine to see if I could change the needle position permanently. No such luck even after searching the web, but at least I figured out how to do it temporarily. I really should label the pictures I take of different machine settings and build a library so I can look it up next time.

Anyway, the needle is in the right position - for now,

a ¼” binding is stitched onto the quilt leaving just the right amount of pattern on the edges,

all ready for hand stitching. Like always I have machine basted both the binding and hanging sleeve to the back using a fragile thread so the stitches will come out easily.

I’m becoming quite attached to this quilt. The frequent blogging requiring frequent documentation may have something to do with it, but it just feels like everything just fell into place with this one. Gotta love that.

Thanks for stopping by!

Spring in my step Pick a binding day

The weekend was eventful with the class and Christening, and both were sucsessful. There were a gazillion pictures taken, I'll post a few as soon as I upload them onto my PC.

Today is time to make the final choice for my mother's quilt which is choosing the binding fabric. I have auditioned a few, but they were either too bright or too boring. I want the binding to blend into the solids and still have some texture; it sounds easy, but is not so.

I need to move on with the quilt, so it may not be the perfect choice, but I have picked a dark blue batik with light flowers. I am a very slow binding stitcher, so I have my work cut out for me for the next few evenings.

Have a wonderful Monday

Spring in my step Pedal to metal style

One quilt top, 4 spools of thread, miles of stitches, loving the oranges so I'm using them all. I have set up a quilting station at the dining room table so I can listen to old movies on Netflix while working.

I love straight line stitching, especially on solid fabrics, but it sure takes a while.

Spring in my step Eddie style

My quilt top and I are having a staring contest ala Eddie & Frasier. I am not sure what it wants, but orange thread it will be, but which tone, which shade, which weight, which, which, which...

I love quilting with Gutermann Sulky varigated thread, but I did not have any oranges. I have been very good at not purchasing much thread for years, so I was delighted to see all the different new shades available. It is close to impossible to choose thread colour without seeing them against the fabric, and the colours look all wrong in the ill lit shop anyway, even when you take them out in the hall to see better. Right? At least that's what I am telling myself as I gave in and bought 2 spools each of 4 shades.

Now the quilt top is outnumbered and I have a nice spread of delicious oranges. Now which one to choose; I better get back to the staring contest.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Spring in my step #2

Our guild meeting last night was as always fun. Being a small group with only 8 members makes it easy to chat while we are happily stitching the night away, which is brilliant as the social aspect is just as important as the quilting part.

I did a lot of prep work before the meeting. 40 squares; 1 from each fabric. What was I thinking. As my 8 year old Kona solid stash consists of ½ yard cuts (some of them already cut into), I did not want to cut the full width of the fabric so I cut chunks instead.

Time consuming, yes, worth it, yes, good looking, oh yes.

This is how I wish my whole stash would look like. This little newly ironed, neatly folded stack is sticking out like a sore thumb on top of the rest of the non-organized addendum to my stash. Oh well.

I was trying out a new (to me) type of block and made a paper test block to see how the size and cuts worked out.

Half way through stitching the blocks I knew the colour scheme would not look like I imagined, but I still liked the way the blocks turned out. I spread them out on a table and a couple of my friends and I had fun playing with them, trying out different ideas.

I had a look at them again this morning, decided on a layout, and started trimming the blocks to the desired measurements. A couple of post-it notes on the ruler made the cutting easier

on all but one block. I was getting sloppy I guess, and the block ended up ½” too narrow.

In my defense, cutting rectangles going this way and that from square blocks is quite a challenge, so one miss out of 40 is not bad at all I’d say.

Blocks ready to sew into rows.

There are quite a few chucky seam allowances so I have pressed the seams between the blocks open. I still have to press the long seams joining the rows, but for now the top is draped over a chair while I am thinking about which thread I will use for quilting.

I'm thinking something orange.

Now to bed; our young ones are early birds even with daylight saving time.

Thanks for stopping by!

Spring in my step

On the top of my to-do list is a quilt for my mother’s upcoming birthday, so I have been pulling lots of fabrics for her quilt. It’s not a minute too soon as it has to be finished by the end of the month. I’m planning on a simple, pieced quilt after tossing lots of ideas for artistic and time consuming designs and appliqué.

40 blocks, 40 fabrics, just celebrating spring.

First we have these 30 solids; mother loves blues, I want to work with greens, and then some reds for contrast. Not too spring-ish you say?

But what if I pair them up with these 10?

I can feel the spring in my strep already, and I haven’t even started ironing the 30 solids yet. Now to work; I’m planning to start on the blocks at the guild meeting tonight so I’d better get my ironing board out.

Have a wonderful spring-ish Wednesday!

Kits in progress

I am in the process of making kits for upcoming Kvist classes. Finding all the proper fabrics takes quite a lot of time, and so do cutting one piece of this and one piece of that. The next step is easy, just cutting each piece into small pieces, eyeballing the sizes. My daughter will be helping me packing up the kits tomorrow. For now the winter fabric pieces are stored in a paper dish tower, 3 fabrics in each layer. I'll be starting on the spring fabrics tomorrow. It's going to be such a relief getting this done.

Do you too spend more time and energy stressing about something than the time and energy it takes to actually get it done? Silly huh.

Erosion Bundle Project, Take 7: Projects

Hi there, how are you all doing? I am back from our holiday, but as it is the day for revealing the results from the Erosion Bundle Project, the summer holiday stuff will have to wait.

As you might or might not remember, I did not have much erosion in my bundles, just a pile of mismatched and blah fabric scraps (now, wouldn’t that be a great name for a fabric line? We give you “Romance and Butterflies” using Mismatched and Blah from Drab & Dreary).

This is the first project, “Stainless Summer” from this post.It went together in no time and is made from the fabric strips in my bundles, one of the white wrappings, the jagged turquoise Kona cotton and a few scraps cut into shape. Everything was covered with a layer of turquoise organza, pin basted and straight line quilted. The binding is leftover binding scraps from my Big Box of Binding. For the backing I have used a piece of thrifty cotton canvas which actually shows a bit of wear and tear.

I still had more wrappings and scraps, so starting with the black & white scrap; I made “Fabulous Summer”, a lady just enjoying the sun and water.Except for the black & white, which is used as it was, everything is free form cut with scissors. That was so much fun! The scraps were covered with a layer of the same turquoise organza and free motion quilted. I added a little string to the water and a scrappy binding.

I still had two more wrappings, lots of string and a few small scraps, and they were made into the Prayer flags from this post. They have been hanging outside since June 30 and are slowly changing. All the rain and wind this summer has left the edges more unraveled and threads and strings tangled. I had to untangle some of them from the branches for the pictures. I will leave them out there to watch how they change through the fall and winter. There will probably not be much left by next spring, but what do I know…

Thanks again to Kris Henderson for arranging this project! I have enjoyed every step of it, and would happily join in next time if there should be one.